Description

This theme focuses on understanding manufacturing systems through the visualization and quantitative analysis of material, information, process and value flows. It covers Value Stream Mapping (VSM), current-state and future-state mapping, process activity mapping, spaghetti diagrams, information-flow analysis, cycle time, waiting time, processing time, lead time, work-in-process, value-added ratios, bottleneck identification and systematic waste classification. Researchers are guided to connect observed waste with measurable operational causes rather than merely identifying lean terminology. The theme also extends conventional VSM toward digital and automated approaches using production data, sensors and digital twins. This emphasis is supported by the uploaded literature, where VSM is treated as a foundational lean tool for managing material and information flows, while digital-twin integration is proposed to enable real-time monitoring, automated data collection, predictive simulation and dynamic value-stream optimization.