what does this symbol mean?

Value stream mapping symbols

The icons of a value stream map, the lean manufacturing diagram of how material and information move from supplier to customer: process and data boxes, inventory triangles, push arrows, supermarkets, kanban, FIFO lanes, kaizen bursts and the timeline.

Test yourself: Value stream mapping symbols quiz

Processes and data 4 symbols

Material flow 5 symbols

Information and improvement 2 symbols

About value stream mapping symbols

A value stream map is a lean manufacturing diagram of how a product moves from raw material to the customer, together with the information that controls it. The Lean Enterprise Institute defines value-stream mapping as diagramming every step involved in the material and information flows needed to bring a product from order to delivery. The US Environmental Protection Agency’s Lean and Environment Toolkit, which uses the standard icons on its own maps, calls it a process mapping method for documenting the current and future states of a value stream, from customer to supplier. Each icon has its own page.

How a map is laid out

The supplier’s factory icon usually sits at the top left, where the material flow starts, and the customer’s at the top right, where it ends. Between them material passes through process boxes, each with a data box of figures beneath it. Inventory triangles, supermarkets and FIFO lanes show the stock waiting between processes, and a striped push arrow or a pull arrow shows how it moves on. Information has its own arrows: thin ones for memos, reports and conversation, a zigzag for electronic data, and kanban cards as signals. Along the bottom, the Timeline adds up the waiting and the processing time.

Current state and future state

A team first draws a current state map, the actual flow of material and information today, and then a future state map of how they should flow, the Lean Enterprise Institute says. Kaizen bursts mark the improvements needed to get from one to the other.

Where the icons come from

The Lean Enterprise Institute says Toyota developed the tool, which it calls a material and information flow diagram. Learning to See, the Institute’s workbook by Mike Rother and John Shook, introduced value-stream mapping to the world in the Institute’s words and received a Shingo Research Prize in 1999; MIT’s lean course notes cite its 1998 edition, and University of Minho researchers call it the reference work. The icons are not a fixed standard. The EPA’s toolkit says a company can use an existing set of symbols or create its own, as long as the method stays consistent within the company, and MIT’s course notes suggest icons meaningful to the process but common enough to be understood by everyone involved.

Beyond the factory

The EPA’s toolkit adds environmental data to its maps, such as the hazardous waste each process produces per shift, marks processes with environmental, health and safety issues with an EHS icon, and draws a materials line along the bottom beside the timeline. The Lean Enterprise Institute notes that value stream mapping is most common in lean manufacturing, though managers in any industry can use it.

Sources

  1. Value-Stream Mapping, Lexicon term, Lean Enterprise Institute, Definition; maps; Learning to See
  2. Lean and Environment Toolkit, Version 1.0, Chapter 3 and Appendix A (Common Icons Used in Value Stream Maps), US Environmental Protection Agency, Appendix A, Overview of VSM; Chapter 3; Additional Resources
  3. Value Stream Mapping at XYZ Company, Madhubala Rauniyar, MS research paper, May 2007, Appendix A: Value Stream Process symbols, University of Wisconsin-Stout (MINDS@UW), Appendix A
  4. Value Stream Mapping Basics, Bo Madsen and Hugh McManus, 16.660J Introduction to Lean Six Sigma Methods, IAP 2012, Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT OpenCourseWare), Slides 18–19
  5. Value Stream Mapping: some Pragmatic Aspects, Rui Manuel Sousa, José Dinis-Carvalho and Peter Hines, Production Engineering Archives 32(1), 2026, 112–122 (CC BY), University of Minho; Production Engineering Archives, Introduction

Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research