Learning to See

Senior experts within the Toyota Production System often draw maps when on the shop floor. These maps show the current physical flow of a product family and the information flow for that product family as they wind through a complex facility making many products. Much more important, these simple maps - often drawn on a scrap of paper - show where steps can be eliminated, flows smoothed, and pull systems introduced in order to create a truly lean value stream for each product family. In 1998 John Shook and Mike Rother of the University of Michigan wrote down Toyota's mapping methodology for the first time in Learning to See. This simple tool makes it possible for you to see through the clutter of a complex plant. You'll soon be able to identify all the processing steps along the path from raw materials to finished goods for each product and all of the information flows going back from the customer through the plant and upstream to suppliers.