Fundamentals, how-tos and the occasional product note.
A value stream map is a single picture of every step, delay and hand-off between raw material and the customer. Here's what it shows and how to read one.
The zig-zag strip at the bottom of a VSM is the time ladder. Here's how to read value-add against wait time — and what a healthy PCE looks like.
Takt time isn't a target to beat — it's the rhythm customer demand sets. Here's how to calculate it, why it isn't cycle time, and what to do when a step can't keep up.
A supermarket is a controlled, sized inventory buffer that lets downstream processes pull only what they need — the mechanism that makes a pull system possible without a computer scheduling everything.
"Kanban" gets used as a catch-all, but the three classic types authorize very different things. Here's how to tell them apart on a value stream map.