Clothing & textiles · worked example
Value stream map example: workwear shirts
A monthly fabric delivery, cutting in big lays, and bundles of 300 moving through a 30-operator sewing line that is just over takt once re-sews are counted. Fabric and finished cartons hold more than half of the lead time. The guide's future state: supermarkets after cutting and sewing, buttons, pressing and packing joined into one cell that sets the pace, and fabric twice a week instead of monthly.
The current state
Workwear shirts (8 sizes, 3 colours): 30 000 shirts a month (customer: Uniform distributor), on 1 shift of 9 hours. That makes 1 500 shirts a day and a takt time of 19.8 seconds. Sewing line is over takt once stoppages and rework are counted (Sewing line: 20.8 s effective against 19.8 s).
- Lead time
- 29 days
- raw material to customer
- Processing time
- 587 s
- actually worked on
- Flow efficiency
- 0.068%
- 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 (Buttons & buttonholes + Pressing & finishing + Inspect & pack) and these 11 actions — each one a kaizen burst on the future-state map:
- 1SMEDCut Fabric cutting changeover from 30 to 15 min (SMED)
- 2Pull (kanban)Set up a kanban supermarket after Fabric cutting (about 2 250 shirts); Fabric cutting makes only what Sewing line withdraws
- 3SMEDCut Sewing line changeover from 20 to 1 min (SMED)
- 4Quality at sourceRaise Sewing line first-pass yield from 94% to 99% (root cause, error-proofing)
- 5Pull (kanban)Set up a kanban supermarket after Sewing line (about 2 250 shirts); Sewing line makes only what Buttons & buttonholes + Pressing & finishing + Inspect & pack withdraws
- 6Continuous flowBuild a continuous-flow cell: Buttons & buttonholes + Pressing & finishing + Inspect & pack (8 operators, one piece at a time)
- 7SMEDCut Buttons & buttonholes changeover from 10 to 5 min (SMED)
- 8PacemakerSend the customer schedule to Buttons & buttonholes + Pressing & finishing + Inspect & pack only — every other process is triggered by kanban or FIFO
- 9HeijunkaLevel the mix and volume at Buttons & buttonholes + Pressing & finishing + Inspect & pack: release one pitch of work (20 shirts) at a time from a load-leveling box
- 10Pull (kanban)Hold finished goods in a supermarket of about 2 250 shirts (1.5 days) that shipping withdraws from
- 11Supplier pullAgree twice weekly deliveries with Textile mill and refill a raw-material supermarket from kanban
The future state: 29 days down to 7.5 days
- Lead time
- 7.5 days
- from 29 days (−74%)
- Stock
- 11 250 shirts
- from 43 500 (−74%)
- Working capital freed
- R5.16 million
- at R160 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.
- Furniture & joinery: painted cabinet doors — MDF doors through CNC cutting, sanding, a shared paint booth, drilling and packing — with repaint rework and a drilling station over takt.
New to the symbols? See the VSM symbols cheat sheet.
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