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Increasingly, companies are taking part in process improvement programmes, which brings about a growing need for employees to interpret and act on data representations. We have carried out case studies in a range of companies to identify the existence and need of what we call ‘techno-mathematical literacies’ (TmL): functional mathematical knowledge mediated by tools and grounded in the context of specific work situations. Based on data gathered from a large biscuit manufacturing and packaging company, we focus our analysis here on semiotic mediation within activity systems and identify two sets of related TmL: the first concerns rendering some invisible aspects visible through the production of mathematical signs; the second concerns developing meanings for action from an interpretation of these signs. We conclude with some more general observations concerning the role that mathematical signs play in the workplace.