The future-state map is a proposal. It says: if we made these specific changes, this is how the process would look and here's the expected impact. It's a hypothesis, not a promise.
Build it in three passes
- Eliminate: strike through stages that shouldn't exist. Handoffs to no one, approvals for approvals, redundant inspections.
- Combine: merge adjacent stages that could be done by one person or one station.
- Sequence: pick a small number of changes to make first. The rest are backlog.
What to include
- Every stage that survives, with its target cycle time (not current).
- Where flow will be pull instead of push (kanban signals, WIP limits).
- Where you'll measure to verify the change worked.
- The bottleneck you expect to become the constraint next.
In MapVS
Clone your current-state map, edit stages to represent the future state, then use the compare view to see the projected delta on PCE and lead time. Save it as a Scenario for a sanity check before you commit.