The communicative effectiveness of Lean mapping tools: a comparison between Value Stream Map and Makigami

Mapping tools have shown, over the years, their effectiveness in enabling the full potential of Lean management (LM) programs within factories. Usually deployed as “first use” practices, mapping techniques provide a wide range of benefits, starting from the identification of waste sources in value stream, up to become a blueprint for Lean implementation, as they help design how the whole door-to-door flow should operate. To this matter, two main mapping techniques can be deployed whenever it comes to a Lean optimization program: the Value Stream Map (VSM) and Makigami. Born and developed in different contexts, both of these mapping tools have shown their usefulness in providing a clear picture regarding the state-of-the-art of any given process. Still, it is not clear from scientific literature which practice best responds in terms of communicative effectiveness and which tool is most recommended depending on the context of application. Based on a real case study of a manufacturing company operating in the production of dies for aluminum profile extruders, the following paper aims to depict which tool is best suited to the proper representation of a design process in light of seven different characteristics, found in literature, used to evaluate communication effectiveness, referred as “7 Cs”. The results of the research show how effective VSM and Makigami respectively are in representing the information flow of a typical design process, but with a different ratio within the different communication dimensions.