Diagnostic
How much of your time is actually work?
We follow a single order all the way through your company, from the moment it comes in until it ships to the client. See how much of that path is real work and how much is just waiting in line. That's where delivery times and money go.
- How long it's worked on — the minutes someone actually has their hands on the order at that step.
- Then it waits in line — the dead time after that step, where the order just waits for its turn at the next one (choose hours or days). Usually this is where the biggest loss hides.
How I got to these numbers
In a typical factory, under 10% of an order's time is real work. The rest is waiting between steps, and that's where most of the lead time gets cut from.
Want a real VSM on your line, on site? Half a day where we map the flow together and walk out with the first 3 moves that shorten lead time.
Let's map your line → See what it would cost to fix →Almost there
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What Value Stream Mapping is and why it matters
Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a map of the steps an order goes through, from intake to delivery. The tool here does a fast version: you map the steps and see how much of the total lead time is real work and how much is pure waiting between steps.
VSM on the whole flow or on a single process
A VSM can be done at two levels, depending on what you want to find out. On the whole flow (from order or raw material to delivery), to see the big picture and find the zone with the biggest time loss — that's what the tool here does. Or on a single process (just the assembly station, just the quote-approval flow, just one department), with far more step-by-step detail inside that zone.
Which one to pick depends on where you are in the diagnostic. If you don't yet know where the time is being lost, start with the whole flow, at the macro level. Once you've found the critical zone, say the order sits longest waiting for approval or at a single machine, a VSM done just on that process shows exactly what's happening inside it: who's waiting on whom, how long each small step takes, where the errors happen. That's how you move from "where the time is lost" to "why it's lost," with a concrete action plan.
Why, most of the time, under 10% of lead time is real work
An order spends most of its time sitting: in a queue, between departments, waiting for an approval or a material. The actual work takes little time; the waiting takes a lot. It's exactly this waiting time that the client feels as slow delivery, and usually no one measures it.
How to read the result
The bigger the gap between lead time and actual work time, the more room you have to shorten delivery without working harder, just by cutting the waiting. That's the first thing I look for in an operational audit: where the order sits doing nothing.