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  1 

Those that create value as perceived by the customer.

  2 

Those which create no value, but are required by product development or production 

systems and so cannot immediately be eliminated.

  3 

Those that don’t add value, so can be immediately eliminated.

Having performed this analysis, plans can be made for removing the category 3 activities and 

then eliminating category 2 activities and enhancing category 1 activities. Womack and Jones 

give the example of the value stream for a cola can. Even a superficially simple product such 

as canned cola can have many activities involved in its production. Indeed there are several 

value streams: that in producing the can itself, those to produce the contents from beet field 

to sugar and corn field to caramel and those to produce the packaging. Taking the example 

of the can itself, value stream analysis can be performed to identify the stages in production 

as follows: