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Chapter 9
Summary
End
As described and illustrated in the preceding chapters, to better understand
and improve any system requires some means of taking its measure and
mapping its essential characteristics. Maps provide a symbolic or graphical
“story” of a system and its associated processes. Metrics represent quantita-
tive symbols that provide much needed “about” system/ process numerical
data and associated yardsticks. The described maps in the various preced-
ing chapters are especially useful in depicting the flow of something—be
it materials, activities, tasks, events, people, data, etc.—through time and
space, albeit at widely differing ...