The Hidden “Tax” Your Factory Pays Every Single Day (And the Fix That Usually Pays for Itself 10× Over)
Imagine you’re standing on your shop floor.
You have 300 parts with the first step done but none anywhere near ready.
An operator is just standing there watching his machine run, and an engineer is digging through three different toolboxes because no one can remember which one has the right insert.
In the office, they are on the phone apologizing—again—because the order that was supposed to ship Thursday is still hasn’t gone out.
But your brain says, “ We’re busy. We’ll fix it later.”
That feeling in your gut? That’s your Elephant.
The rational analysis in your head? That’s your Rider.
In their book Switch, Chip and Dan Heath explain why change is so hard: the Rider can see the destination perfectly, but if the Elephant isn’t motivated, it just sits down. And if the Path isn’t clear, even a willing Elephant and Rider who agree will spin in circles.
Many small and medium manufacturers are stuck exactly here.
The Rider in you knows about lean and knows waste is expensive.
The Elephant in you is exhausted from firefighting and doesn’t believe anything will ever really change.
Value-stream mapping is the rare tool that speaks to both.
First, the Rider: the cold, hard numbers
Small and medium-sized manufacturers that run a serious value-stream mapping program (even just one good map per year) typically see:
35–65 % reduction in end-to-end lead time
20–45 % increase in labor productivity
15–40 % reduction in inventory
Payback periods measured in months, not years—average ROI across documented lean programs sits north of 200 % in the first 12–18 months.
These aren’t Toyota fairy tales. These are numbers from job shops, machine shops, and fabrication plants with 3–300 people—companies exactly like yours.
And here’s the part that usually makes the Rider sit up straight: the cost of doing nothing is already on your P&L, you just can’t see it.
Every minute your people spend walking, searching, waiting, or reworking is a line item.
A medium-sized shop (say $8–12 M revenue) typically bleeds at least $250,000–$600,000 a year in hidden waste before they ever draw their first map. That’s real money coming straight off the bottom line.
Now, the Elephant: the part that actually hurts
Walk the floor with any shop crew while you build a current-state map, and within an hour someone will blurt out the same quiet confession:
“I didn’t realize we waited that much.”
That’s the moment the Elephant feels the weight.
It’s not just the numbers on the timeline—3 days of lead time when the part only touches a tool for 47 minutes.
It’s watching an apprentice circle three times because the steel is “somewhere in the rack.”
It’s the expediter who spends half his morning chasing a job that’s been sitting for two weeks waiting on one missing stamp.
It’s the machinist who runs the same setup twice because the first pallet got buried under yesterday’s hot job.
These aren’t lazy people. These are proud, tough, get-it-done people who go home every night with sore feet and the nagging feeling that they fought harder than they should have had to.
When the map goes up on the wall and everyone sees the same river of waste at the same time—those long, ugly waiting triangles, the inventory mountains, the endless loops of rework—the room gets quiet.
I’ve seen welders with 25 years on the floor stare at a current-state map and say, almost in a whisper, “That’s my life right there.”
That’s the Elephant finally admitting it’s exhausted from running uphill every single day.
Value-stream mapping doesn’t shame anyone. It just turns the invisible pain you’ve all been carrying into something you can finally see—and fix together.
And once the Elephant feels that relief, it is unstoppable. Remember, it’s not lazy. It’s exhausted from running in mud.
So what exactly is value-stream mapping, and why does it work when everything else fails?
Value-stream mapping is simply drawing a big picture of how a part (or family of parts actually flows from raw material to shipping dock—every process step, every wait, every pile of inventory, every piece of paperwork, every approval.
The standard steps we follow in the workshop are straightforward:
Pick one important product (maybe the one that hurts the most).
Walk the floor and collect real data (cycle times, changeover times, batch sizes, defect rates, etc.).
Draw the Current-State Map (this is the painful but cathartic part—suddenly everyone sees the same mess at the same time).
Identify the eight wastes and the biggest levers.
Design a Future-State Map (usually 50–70 % less lead time on paper).
Build an action plan with owners and dates.
That’s it. No six-month consulting engagement. No fifty-page report. Just one focused process, one wall, a handful of sharp people, and a couple of days of work.
Here’s the workshop I run that makes this real
I come to your facility for a hands-on Value-Stream Mapping Workshop limited to five of your key people (the fewer the better—more gets done).
By the end of day you will have:
A professional-grade Current-State Map of one of your most important (or most painful) process families.
A Future-State Map that typically shows 40–60 % less lead time and 20–40 % less inventory.
A prioritized plan with names next to every action item.
Your own team fully capable of repeating the process on the next product family without me.
(If you want help executing the future state—coaching the kaizens, holding people accountable—that part is negotiable and priced separately.)
Most clients see the workshop pay for itself within 3–6 months from the first round of improvements alone. Many see it pays for itself before I leave the building.
Direct the Rider, Motivate the Elephant, Shape the Path
Rider → crystal-clear data and a step-by-step script.
Elephant → the emotional punch of finally seeing the waste everyone has felt for years, plus the pride of building something dramatically better in just two days.
Path → I bring the pencils, the paper, the timer, the structure, and twenty years of scars so you don’t have to learn the hard way.
If your Elephant is tired of running in mud and your Rider is ready to admit the current path isn’t as perfect as it can be, send me a message.
Let’s draw your first map and turn all that hidden tax you’re paying into profit you actually get to keep.
(Spots are limited—only one or two workshops per month so I can keep them small and high-impact.)
Looking forward to meeting your Elephant and your Rider on the shop floor.
— Stephen Sikorski
Value-Stream Mapping Workshop for Small & Medium Manufacturers
Want to know more book a free consultation.