Furniture & joinery · worked example
Value stream map example: painted cabinet doors
Twelve sizes and colours, a paint booth shared with other products and sequenced by eye, and one door in ten repainted. Drilling is over takt. The guide doesn't add people there: it joins drilling and packing into a cell, puts a FIFO lane in front of the paint booth and a supermarket after it, and targets the booth's changeovers and repaints.
The current state
Painted MDF cabinet doors (12 sizes and colours): 2 400 doors a week (customer: Kitchen installers), on 1 shift of 9 hours. That makes 480 doors a day and a takt time of 61.9 seconds. Drilling & hinges is over takt once stoppages and rework are counted (Drilling & hinges: 65.1 s effective against 61.9 s).
- Lead time
- 18 days
- raw material to customer
- Processing time
- 208 s
- actually worked on
- Flow efficiency
- 0.039%
- processing ÷ lead time
- Schedule points
- 5
- places told what to make
What the improvement guide recommends
Run through the builder's nine future-state questions, accepting each recommendation, this value stream gets one pacemaker (Drilling & hinges + Inspect & pack) and these 17 actions — each one a kaizen burst on the future-state map:
- 1SMEDCut CNC cutting changeover from 20 to 15 min (SMED)
- 2TPMRaise CNC cutting uptime from 85% to 95% (TPM: find and fix the stoppages)
- 3Pull (kanban)Set up a kanban supermarket after CNC cutting (about 720 doors); CNC cutting makes only what Edge profiling & sanding withdraws
- 4SMEDCut Edge profiling & sanding changeover from 10 to 7 min (SMED)
- 5Quality at sourceRaise Edge profiling & sanding first-pass yield from 97% to 99% (root cause, error-proofing)
- 6FIFO laneMark out a FIFO lane from Edge profiling & sanding to Spray painting (max 240 doors); stop Edge profiling & sanding when it is full
- 7SMEDCut Spray painting changeover from 30 to 10 min (SMED)
- 8TPMRaise Spray painting uptime from 80% to 95% (TPM: find and fix the stoppages)
- 9Quality at sourceRaise Spray painting first-pass yield from 90% to 99% (root cause, error-proofing)
- 10Pull (kanban)Set up a kanban supermarket after Spray painting (about 720 doors); Spray painting makes only what Drilling & hinges + Inspect & pack withdraws
- 11Continuous flowBuild a continuous-flow cell: Drilling & hinges + Inspect & pack (2 operators, one piece at a time)
- 12Standard workCut Drilling & hinges cycle time from 58 s to 52 s (balance the work, remove waste)
- 13SMEDCut Drilling & hinges changeover from 15 to 2 min (SMED)
- 14PacemakerSend the customer schedule to Drilling & hinges + Inspect & pack only — every other process is triggered by kanban or FIFO
- 15HeijunkaLevel the mix and volume at Drilling & hinges + Inspect & pack: release one pitch of work (10 doors) at a time from a load-leveling box
- 16Pull (kanban)Hold finished goods in a supermarket of about 720 doors (1.5 days) that shipping withdraws from
- 17Supplier pullAgree daily deliveries with Board merchant and refill a raw-material supermarket from kanban
The future state: 18 days down to 6.5 days
- Lead time
- 6.5 days
- from 18 days (−64%)
- Stock
- 3 120 doors
- from 8 640 (−64%)
- Working capital freed
- R2.48 million
- at R450 a unit
- Schedule points
- 1
- from 5
More value stream map examples
- Metal fabrication: steel brackets — the builder's main worked example, 37.5 days to 8.
- Food & beverage: a sauce bottling line — Six flavours of table sauce through cooking, filling, labelling and case packing — where filling can't keep up and finished pallets hold the most days.
- Clothing & textiles: workwear shirts — Shirts through cutting, a 30-operator sewing line, buttons, pressing and packing — with three weeks of fabric at the front and a sewing line over takt.
New to the symbols? See the VSM symbols cheat sheet.
Get the free Value Stream Walk Kit (Excel)
Free, instant download. We'll only email you the occasional practical quality update — no spam, unsubscribe anytime.