Spaghetti Diagram

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What Does Spaghetti Diagram Mean?

A spaghetti diagram is a visual aid helpful for presentation that shows a workflow or data flow, or some other kind of process through a system.

A spaghetti diagram is also known as a spaghetti plot, spaghetti chart or spaghetti model.

Techopedia Explains Spaghetti Diagram

In a spaghetti diagram, drawn lines represent the movement of people, goods or data through various components of the system. Spaghetti diagrams can be set up to show the relative proximity of different parts of a workspace or otherwise help viewers to understand the processes that things go through to get to their destinations.

One of the major benefits of a spaghetti diagram is that viewers can see how items move, physically or conceptually, within the system. They can observe these complex relationships to try to make them more efficient or to cut down on waste. For example, someone creating a spaghetti diagram might draw rectangles and circles that represent actual workstations in a manufacturing process. The presenter draws a line wherever a product or material moves between different workstations. In many cases, changing the process can make these workflows simpler and boost productivity.

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Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert
Margaret Rouse
Technology Expert

Margaret is an award-winning technical writer and teacher known for her ability to explain complex technical subjects to a non-technical business audience. Over the past twenty years, her IT definitions have been published by Que in an encyclopedia of technology terms and cited in articles by the New York Times, Time Magazine, USA Today, ZDNet, PC Magazine, and Discovery Magazine. She joined Techopedia in 2011. Margaret's idea of a fun day is helping IT and business professionals learn to speak each other’s highly specialized languages.

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