VSM symbols: every value stream mapping icon, explained
All 30 symbols you'll meet on a value stream map, grouped the way you draw them: material flow, information flow, and the general symbols — operators, kaizen bursts and the timeline. Most come from the set made standard by Rother and Shook's Learning to See.
Printable cheat sheet
Every symbol and its meaning on two A4 pages — for the clipboard on the walk.
Download the PDFMaterial flow
- Customer / supplierA company outside the plant. The customer sits top right, the supplier top left, each with a data box underneath.
- ProcessOne area where material flows without stopping. A new box starts wherever the flow stops and stock builds up.
- Shared processA process other product families also use — a paint line, a big press. Not all of its time is yours.
- Data boxUnder each process: cycle time (C/T), changeover (C/O), uptime, first-pass yield (FPY) and batch size.
- WorkcellSeveral processes joined into one cell that makes one piece at a time — continuous flow.
- InventoryStock waiting between steps. Count it on the floor, then turn it into days of customer demand.
- Truck shipmentDeliveries in from the supplier and out to the customer, marked with how often they run.
- Push arrowMaterial made to a schedule and pushed to the next step whether it needs it or not.
- Shipment arrowRaw material arriving from the supplier, and finished goods leaving for the customer.
- SupermarketA small, controlled stock. The process that feeds it makes only what was taken out. Open on the supplying side.
- Withdrawal (pull)The downstream process takes exactly what it needs from the supermarket, when it needs it.
- FIFO laneFirst in, first out, with a fixed maximum. When the lane is full the process feeding it stops.
- Buffer / safety stockStock kept against swings in customer demand (buffer) or against internal problems (safety stock).
Information flow
- Manual informationPrinted schedules, phone calls, a list on the whiteboard. Label what it is and how often.
- Electronic informationEDI, email, MRP and ERP messages — the zig-zag marks it as electronic.
- Production controlWhere the schedules are made — MRP, ERP or a planner with a spreadsheet.
- Production kanbanA card that tells a process to make a set quantity. It travels from the supermarket back to the supplying process.
- Withdrawal kanbanA hatched card that authorises moving parts from the supermarket to the process that uses them.
- Signal kanbanAn upside-down triangle that triggers a whole batch when stock falls to a reorder point. Used where changeovers still force batches.
- Kanban postWhere kanban cards are collected before they are taken on.
- Kanban arriving in batchesCards that pile up and travel together instead of one at a time.
- Sequenced-pull ballMake exactly the next item called for, straight away — pull without a supermarket.
- Load leveling (heijunka)Spreads the product mix and the volume evenly over the day at the pacemaker, one pitch at a time.
- Go-see schedulingSomeone walks the floor, looks at the stock and adjusts the schedule by eye.
- Verbal / phoneInformation passed on by word of mouth.
General
- Kaizen burstAn improvement the future state needs. In the builder each one becomes an action with an owner and a date.
- OperatorA person, seen from above. The number beside it is the headcount.
- Quality problemWhere scrap or rework happens (a common addition to the original set).
- PacemakerThe one process that receives the customer schedule. Everything after it flows first in, first out.
- Timeline (lead-time ladder)Upper steps: days waiting in stock. Lower steps: seconds of processing. Totals at the right-hand end.
How to read a value stream map
- Top rightThe customer, with a data box: demand, takt, pack-out quantity, shifts.
- Top leftThe supplier, with the material and how often it arrives.
- Top centreProduction control, with the information arrows: orders and forecasts in, schedules out.
- Middle rowThe processes, left to right in the order material moves, with stock or a pull symbol between each pair.
- BottomThe timeline: days of stock on the upper steps, seconds of processing on the lower ones, totals at the right.
On a current-state map you'll mostly use inventory triangles, push arrows and information arrows to every process. The future-state map is where supermarkets, FIFO lanes, kanban, the load-leveling box, the pacemaker and kaizen bursts come in.
Skip the drawing
The Value Stream Builder draws these symbols for you
Answer five setup questions and the current-state map draws itself, with takt, days of stock and the lead-time ladder worked out. A guide then takes you through the nine future-state questions. Free, no sign-up, and your maps stay in your browser.
The symbol set follows Rother and Shook, Learning to See (Lean Enterprise Institute); the quality-problem symbol is a common addition. Qlause is not affiliated with the Lean Enterprise Institute.