Data box
The figures for a process or a customer, written in a box under its icon. Under a process box the data box usually gives the cycle time (C/T), changeover time (C/O) and uptime.
Easily confused with
How to read it
The Lean Enterprise Institute defines the usual entries. Cycle time (C/T) is the time an operator takes to go through all of the work elements before repeating them; changeover time (C/O) is the time needed to set up a machine to make a different product or part number; uptime is the percentage of time a machine is available for production. The EPA’s toolkit names the same three as the data commonly collected, and its own maps add the hazardous waste each process produces per shift. Under a factory icon, the UW-Stout study says the data box gives such things as shipping frequency, transfer batch size and demand per period.
Also searched as: data box symbol, process data box, value stream map data box, vsm data box.
Look-alikes
The Process box above it holds only the process name. The Timeline along the bottom of the map carries times too, but as a running total of waiting and processing.
Read next
- Next in Value stream mapping symbolsTimelineThe line along the bottom of a value stream map that adds up the time a product spends waiting and being worked on. It steps up under each inventory, for the waiting time, and down under each process, for the processing time.
- The same shape in Asian flagsFlag of IranIran’s flag has three equal stripes of green, white and red, with the national emblem in red in the centre and the words “Allahu akbar” (“God is greatest”) written 22 times in white along the edges of the green and the red. Iran’s constitution names the colours, the emblem and the motto but gives them no meaning; the art historian Kimia Maleki writes that the 22 marks the day the revolution of 1979 won, the 22nd day of the 11th month of the Iranian calendar.
More value stream mapping symbols
The same shape elsewhere
Browse symbols drawn with letters and numbers, lines or squares and rectangles.
Sources
- Value-Stream Mapping, Lexicon term, Lean Enterprise Institute, Zones of a value-stream map
- 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, Data Box
- Lean and Environment Toolkit, Version 1.0, Chapter 3 and Appendix A (Common Icons Used in Value Stream Maps), US Environmental Protection Agency, Chapter 3; Appendix A icon key
- 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, Section 4.2
Researched, edited and approved by Rory Hansen before publishing. Last reviewed October 9, 2026. How we research
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