FirstSteps

Ribbon Elements

VASCO adds a new ribbon tab to Visio, containing all available commands for drawing.

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Group File

New VASCO document

Creates a new diagram prepared for drawing a VASCO value stream.

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Group Processes

Add Serial Process

Select an process, buffer or supplier to activate the button. On clicks adds a new buffer to the right including the connecting internal flow.

Add Parallel Process

Select an process or buffer to activate the button. On clicks adds a new process on top of the selected item including the connecting internal flow.

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Group Buffers

Add Serial Buffer

Select an process, buffer or supplier to activate the button. On clicks adds a new buffer to the right including the connecting internal flow.

Add Parallel Buffer

Select an process or buffer to activate the button. On clicks adds a new process on top of the selected item including the connecting internal flow.

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Group Connections

Add Internal/External Flow

When you select two shapes (e.g. two processes, buffer and process, etc.), this button becomes active. On click a connection is drawn between the two selected elements. If one of the selected elements is the Supplier or the Customer an external flow is inserted (represented by the gray filled arrow), otherwise an internal flow is used.

Push / Pull

When an internal transport gets selected, the button Push/Pull becomes available. It toggles the between a push and pull. The figure below shows a Push connection from Process 1 to Process 2.2 and a pull connection from Process 1 to Process 2.1.

Toggle Length

Using the Toggle Length button, the length of connections of newly added processes/buffers can be changed. The following figure show the default length for internal connections between process 1 and process 2. The connection between process 2 and process 3 shows the length of the connection when the button is toggled.

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Group Edit

All Properties

Open a dialog, which enables are more "Spreadsheet" like way to edit properties of processes, buffers and internal flows.

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VASCO Mode

Calculation on/off

Toggle the calculation mode for VASCO. When Calculations are turned on, VASCO checks the value stream for consistency, before connecting the graph calculations.

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Drawing a simple VSM

All available control elements are optimized for the fast creation of VSM diagrams, especially adding and positioning process or buffer symbol. Typical repeating tasks are automated like the adding of serial process/buffer symbols, where VASCO already connects the two symbols using an internal flow connector. The inserted process/buffer stays selected, so that the user can immediately use the commands ”Add serial process”/”Add serial buffer” multiple times. Figure 2(b) shows how to create a VSM diagram. From (1) to (4) using only mouse clicks - or if you are on a touch device, then only 4 touch events are needed, which is much faster then a hand-made drawing. Therefore, the usual manual steps of transforming the hand-made drawings into digital documents is now completely obsolete when using VASCO.