How to use a spaghetti diagram

By Laurel Carbonneau

Posted Feb 06, 2017

If you’re concerned your laboratory’s layout isn’t well organized, Bob Yenkner of Practical Process Improvement offers an easy tip to help make sense of your space: draw a spaghetti diagram.


“Using a drawing or rough blueprint of your lab’s layout (it doesn’t have to be to scale), follow the path a case takes to get from start to finish. Once you’re done, your workflow may look like a mess of squiggly lines, but this exercise can help you see where you have inefficiencies in your workflow,” says Yenkner. 


For instance, Yenkner recently created the diagram below showing the travel pattern of a denture case for one of his laboratory-clients to evaluate its workflow. The diagram gave the client a great visual showing how much time technicians were spending “in motion.” It made some key changes to reduce unnecessary movements of the case and make the technicians’ workflow...

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About The Author

  • Laurel Carbonneau

    Associate Editor at LMT Communications, Inc. · Bethlehem, CT

    With an eye for detail and exceptional proofreading skills, Laurel, a 11-year veteran of LMT, edits numerous sections of the magazine, writes feature articles and is our editorial webmaster.

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