Learning to See: Value Stream Mapping to Add Value and Eliminate MUDA 1st Edition

This is the best book to use to learn value stream mapping, and you can honestly use the insight gained by working through it to improve factory processes. Really.I worked through the book myself over a hotel weekend, and then tried it out, and then read it again. I have honestly used Value Stream Mapping to take $5 million + (probably WAY+) worth of stupid out of the processes at my part of a factory that does about $30M per month in salesThe bad:The book comes with a CD. It's worthless. If you buy a used copy without the CD, don't worry about it.Update: OK, so this was interesting to come across a few years down the road... I bought this book and wrote the preceding review about 5 years ago. I got some very good results out the improvements that eventually came from mapping current state processes, and then mapping the future state, and then getting to work on the differences (lean mfg.). Over the entire factory, the benefit turned out to be a little shy of 10 million dollars. Fast forward five years, and now I've got my own operation to run. Obviously, everyone here has read this book. The factory supervisors and the lead men write the current state, and say what needs fixing. The engineers write the future state, and a Project manager figures out how to get there and prioritizes which problems to work in what order. So far, we've been able to take 5% out of cost in six months, and that's only because we don't have much practice.

This book really deserve your attention. If you read "Lean Thinking" the book by Womack and Jones and you enjoyed it, you can't miss "Learning to see" as it goes deeply into the details of chapters 2 and 3 of the Womack-Jones work helping the reader to understand that an industry is not a no profit organization but an organization that need to make -and/or possibly not wasting - money.In my experience almost every improvement acitivity must begin with a material-value flow analysis. In this standpoint this book has been for me illuminating.I give to it 5 star because it has a strong practical touch and is rich of informations and hints -"draw the flow with a pencil, focus on the process not on how well you use the computer"...

Fast shipping and good condition

This book is a really great resource, even for someone with VSM experience. I was able to pull it out to use as a reference to show others recently.The binding of this book stinks for a $60 book to be frank. If this book came with a rear cover then it didn’t last long. I put this in my backpack the day it came so I could look at it while on work trips over the following 3 weeks. I am unsure if the back fell off or it never had one but that resulted in the back pages getting moisture accidentally from a conference table. It’s also not very protected and I’m very worried about the pages coming off the binding. This is a book you want to take with you as a resource but this binding doesn’t hold up to that

I saw this book referenced in several other books on the subject of Lean. I thought it was just an explanation of how to draw a value-stream map.Actually, Learning To See is a real workbook. Most of its content explains how to draw a future-state map, step by step. And then how to link to policy deployment.Very useful for a practitioner desiring to (1) write a diagnostic, (2) write an appropriate remedy, (3) make it obvious why the remedy is far superior to the current situation, and (4) formalize application of the remedy.

Great book to learn how to do value stream mapping. Although not a lot of pages one will need to read and do the exercises several times before grasping the concepts.

Disappointed in this book. I have 26 years of experience in process improvement and I do current state mapping all the time. The key is to do it collaboratively and fast. VSM is great but the focus of this book is manufacturing. VSM goes way beyond manufacturing into other industries, especially in technology. However, the very small section that talks about software development isn't valuable. All the symbols and structure of old-school VSM are slow and have a lot of overhead. We have digital tools now like Mural and Miro and I would love to see a book explain a more modern way to do VSM. The book is spiral bound which I like with lots of tabs. I just wish they would modernize it without the emphasis of the numerous symbols. I do like that it includes some of the value calcs. Overall, I wouldnt recommend it for someone who is looking for a modern way to map for value.

If you want to get fast into lean management in your comany, this Hanndbook is a very good, easy step by step tool, to create your own value stream. I worked with it for a bachelor thesis and shows exactl, how to describe, optimize and improve the door to door value stream. Not every detail is included in this book, but with this tool you know what you need to reserach to improve you internal company logistic!