Lean Excellence

Spaghetti Diagram

A spaghetti diagram (sometimes called a physical process flow or a point-to-point workflow diagram) is a line-based representation of the continuous flow of some entity, such as a person, a product or a piece of information, as it goes through some process.

Supermarket Pull System

A supermarket is an inventory facility that is used if continuous flow does not extend upstream in a process; in other words, if batching is necessary, then supermarkets are used to regulate process flows.

A3

A3 is a structured problem solving and continuous improvement approach, first employed at Toyota and typically used by lean manufacturing practitioners. ... A3 is also known as SPS, which stands for "Systematic Problem Solving". The most basic definition of an A3 would be a P-D-C-A storyboard or report, reflecting Toyota's way of capturing the PDCA process on one sheet of paper. But the broader notion of the A3 as a process-embodying the way of thinking represented in the format-captures the heart of lean management. A3 document structures effective and efficient dialogue that fosters understanding followed by the opportunity for deep agreement.

Andon Cord

Andon (Japanese: アンドン or あんどん or 行灯) is a manufacturing term referring to a system to notify management, maintenance, and other workers of a quality or process problem. The centerpiece is a device incorporating signal lights to indicate which workstation has the problem.

Capability Analysis

Capability analysis is a set of calculations used to assess whether a system is statistically able to meet a set of specifications or requirements.

Utilization

Capacity utilization is a percentage measure or KPI which indicates the amount of available capacity that is being used to supply current demand. It is a good indicator of business and market conditions as when times are good most plants are able to run at close to 70-80% capacity utilization and in some cases all the way up to 100%.

Cell Production

Cell production has the flow production line split into a number of self-contained units.

Variation

Common cause variation is the remaining variation after removing the special causes (non-normal causes) due to one or more of the 5Ms and an "E" causes (Manpower, Material, Method, Measurement, Machine, and Environment), also known as 6Ms (Man power, Mother nature, Materials, Method, Measurements or Machine).

Continuous flow

Continuous-flow manufacturing, or Repetitive-FlowManufacturing, is an approach to discrete manufacturing that contrasts with batch production. It is associated with a just-in-time and kanban production approach, and calls for an ongoing examination and improvement efforts which ultimately requires integration of all elements of the production system.

Control Charts

Control charts, also known as Shewhart charts (after Walter A. Shewhart) or process-behavior charts, are a statistical process control tool used to determine if a manufacturing or business process is in a state of control.

Cycle time

Cycle time is the time starting when an operation begins to the point of time when the operation ends.

Milk run

Delivery method for mixed loads from different suppliers. Instead of each of several (say 5) suppliers sending a vehicle every week to meet the weekly needs of a customer, one vehicle visits each supplier on a daily basis and picks up deliveries for that customer.

Standardized work

Detailed definition of the most efficient method to produce a product (or perform a service) at a balanced flow to achieve a desired output rate. It breaks down the work into elements, which are sequenced, organized and repeatedly followed.

o Shigeo Shingo

Dr. Shigeo Shingo was an industrialist engineer, and a major consultant at Toyota, that successfully helped the company achieve lean manufacturing. He mastered the Kaizen concept. He understood the success of lean manufacturing by integrating the people with effective and efficient processes. In 1960, he developed the SMED system with the aim to achieve zero quality defects.

o Fredrick Taylor and The Scientific Method

Early in the 1890s, the father of scientific management, Frederick Taylor investigated closely in the work methods and workers at the factory level. After his supervision, he propounded the concepts like standardization of work, time studies and motion studies, in order to achieve efficiency in the work methods, processes and operations.

FIFO

FIFO is the acronym for First-In, First-Out. FIFO is a cost flow assumption often used to remove costs from the Inventory account when an item in inventory had been purchased at varying costs. Under FIFO, the oldest cost of an item in inventory will be removed first when one of those items is sold.

Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA)

Failure modes and effects analysis (FMEA) is a step-by-step approach for identifying all possible failures in a design, a manufacturing or assembly process, or a product or service. "Failure modes" means the ways, or modes, in which something might fail. ... FMEA is used during design to prevent failures.

o Daniel Jones

Founder and Chairman of the Lean Enterprise Academy in the U.K., Daniel T. Jones is a senior advisor to the Lean Enterprise Institute, management thought leader, and mentor on applying lean process thinking to every type of business.

Gemba

Gemba (現場, also romanized as genba) is a Japanese term meaning "the real place." Japanese detectives call the crime scene gemba, and Japanese TV reporters may refer to themselves as reporting fromgemba. In business, gemba refers to the place where value is created; in manufacturing the gemba is the factory floor.

Genchi Genbutsu

Genchi Genbutsu (現地現物) means "Go and See" and it is a key principle of the Toyota Production System. It suggests that in order to truly understand a situation one needs to go to genba (現場) or, the "real place" - where work is done.

Hansei

Hansei (反省, "self-reflection") is a central idea in Japanese culture, meaning to acknowledge one's own mistake and to pledge improvement.

Heijunka

Heijunka (pronounced hi-JUNE-kuh) is a Japanese word that means "leveling." When implemented correctly, heijunka elegantly - and without haste - helps organizations meet demand while reducing while reducing wastes in production and interpersonal processes.

o Henry Ford

Henry Ford pioneered the famous manufacturing strategy, in which all the resources used at the manufacturing site- people, machines, equipment, tools and products were arranged in such a manner that a continuous flow of production is facilitated.

Inventory turns

In accounting, the Inventory turnover is a measure of the number of times inventoryis sold or used in a time period such as a year. The equation for inventory turnoverequals the cost of goods sold or net sales divided by the average inventory.

Total Productive /Preventive maintenance

In industry, total productive maintenance (TPM) is a system of maintaining and improving the integrity of production and quality systems through the machines, equipment, processes, and employees that add business value to an organization.

SIPOC

In process improvement, a SIPOC (sometimes COPIS) is a tool that summarizes the inputs and outputs of one or more processes in table form. The acronymSIPOC stands for suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, and customers which form the columns of the table. ... To help people in defining a new process.

Pace Making operation (or Bottleneck)

In production and project management, a bottleneckis one process in a chain of processes, such that its limited capacity reduces the capacity of the whole chain. The result of having a bottleneck are stalls inproduction, supply overstock, pressure from customers and low employee morale.

Sequential and Synonymous

Indepedent Steps

Cycle Stock

Inventory required to fulfill average demand

Safety Stock

Inventory to buffer againsts variability

Takt Time

It is the maximum acceptable time to meet the demands of the customer. In other words, TAKT Time is the speed with which the product needs to be created in order to satisfy the needs of the customer.

o James Womack

James P. Womack was the research director of the International Motor Vehicle Program (IMVP) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge, Massachusetts and is the founder and chairman of the Lean Enterprise Institute, a nonprofit institution for the dissemination and exploration of the Lean thinking

o Jeff Liker

Jeffrey Liker, author of the popular Toyota Way books, is the acknowledged expert on Toyota processes. He is professor of Industrial and Operations Engineering at the University of Michigan.

Jidoka

Jidoka is one of the two pillars of the Toyota Production System along with just-in-time. Jidokahighlights the causes of problems because work stops immediately when a problem first occurs. Jidoka sometimes is called autonomation, meaning automation with human intelligence. This is because it gives equipment the ability to distinguish good parts from bad autonomously, without being monitored by an operator. This eliminates the need for operators to continuously watch machines and leads in turn to large productivity gains because one operator can handle several machines, often termed multiprocess handling.

Kanban

Kanban (看板) (literally signboard or billboard in Japanese) is a scheduling system for lean manufacturing and just-in-time manufacturing (JIT). Kanban is an inventory-control system to control the supply chain. Taiichi Ohno, an industrial engineer at Toyota, developed kanban to improve manufacturing efficiency.

Decoupling

Key Characteristic of Decoupled process - Steps with Inventory in between two steps.

Kiichiro Toyota

Kiichiro Toyota was the founder and second president of Toyota Motor Corporation. He was the son of Sakichi Toyoda and later in 1937, he founded the Toyota Motor Corporation. He took forward his father's concept of Jikoda and developed his philosophy about just-in-time (JIT) concept in manufacturing.

Last In First Out

LIFO is the acronym for last-in, first-out. It is a cost flow assumption that can be used by U.S. companies in moving the costs of products from inventory to the cost of goods sold. Under LIFO the latest or more recent costs of products purchased (or produced) are the first costs expensed as the cost of goods sold.

Lead time aka throughput time

Lead time represents the time expended—but not the effort. You could have a Lead Time of 25 days yet spend only 2 hours working to solve the problem or create the product. Manufacturing throughput time is the amount of time required for a product to pass through a manufacturing process, thereby being converted from raw materials into finished goods. The concept also applies to the processing of raw materials into a component or sub-assembly.

Make to Stock Products

Make to stock (MTS) is a traditional production strategy that is used by businesses to match production and inventory with consumer demand forecasts. The (MTS) method requires an accurate forecast of demand in order to determine how much stock should be produced.

Muda

Muda (無駄) is a Japanese word meaning "futility; uselessness; wastefulness", and is a key concept in the Toyota Production System (TPS) as one of the three types of deviation from optimal allocation of resources (the others being mura and muri).

Mura

Mura (斑) is a Japanese word meaning "unevenness; irregularity; lack of uniformity; nonuniformity; inequality", and is a key concept in the Toyota Production System (TPS) as one of the three types of waste (muda, mura, muri).

Muri

Muri (無理) is a Japanese word meaning "unreasonableness; impossible; beyond one's power; too difficult; by force; perforce; forcibly; compulsorily; excessiveness; immoderation", and is a key concept in the Toyota Production System (TPS) as one of the three types of waste (muda, mura, muri).

Non-value added time

Non-value added time is amount of the production cycle time that does not directly produce goods or services. In other words, this is the amount of timethat goods are not actively being worked on. The non-value added time equation calculates the total time byadding move time, inspection time, and wait time.

o Taichi Ohno

One of the biggest achievements of Taichi Ohno was to integrate the Just-in-Time system with the Jikoda System. After his visit to America to study the Ford's methods in 1953, he got highly inspired and understood the future needs of the consumers that they will select the needed products from the shelves and how the products replenished. This has inspired him to build the successful kanban system.

Operational availability

Operational availability is a measure of the "real" average availability over a period of time and includes all experienced sources of downtime, such as administrative downtime, logistic downtime, etc. ...Operational availability is the ratio of the system uptime to total time.

Order to cash cycle

Order to cash (O2C or OTC) normally refers to one of the top-level (context level) business process for receiving and processing customer orders.

Overall equipment effectiveness

Overall equipment effectiveness (OEE) is a term coined by Seiichi Nakajima in the 1960s to evaluate how effectively a manufacturing operation is utilized. It is based on the Harrington Emerson way of thinking regarding labor efficiency.

PDCA

PDCA (plan-do-check-act, sometimes seen as plan-do-check-adjust) is a repetitive four-stage model for continuous improvement (CI) in business process management. ThePDCA model is also known as the Deming circle/cycle/wheel, Shewhart cycle, control circle/cycle, or plan-do-study-act (PDSA).

Pareto Analysis

Pareto Analysis is a statistical technique in decision-making used for the selection of a limited number of tasks that produce significant overall effect. It uses the Pareto Principle (also known as the 80/20 rule) the idea that by doing 20% of the work you can generate 80% of the benefit of doing the entire job.

Single Minute Exchange of Dies (SMED)

Single-minute exchange of die (SMED) is one of the many lean production methods for reducing waste in a manufacturing process. It provides a rapid and efficient way of converting a manufacturing process from running the current product to running the next product.

5S

Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Stabilize, Sustain

7 Types of Waste

TIMWOODS (Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Over-Processing, Over-Production, Defects, Skills)

Root Cause Analysis - 5 Whys

The 5 Whys is a technique used in the Analyze phase of the Six Sigma DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control) methodology. ... By repeatedly asking the question "Why" (five is a good rule of thumb), you can peel away the layers of symptoms which can lead to the root cause of a problem.

Capacity

The capacity has to match your demand. If your demand is higher than your capacity, then you will not be able to supply the customer. On the other hand, if your capacity is higher than the demand, then you will have lots of idle workers and machines, which is not good either.

Decoupling

The customer order decoupling point (CODP) identifies the point in the material flow where the product is linked to a specific customer.

Batch (Lot) Size

The number of flow units that are produced between two set-ups. Does not take into account actual demand for the flow units.

WIP

Work in progress (WIP), sometimes referred to as work in process, is the sum of all costs put into the production process to manufacture products that are partially completed. WIP refers to raw materials, labor and overhead costs incurred for products that are at various stages of the production process.

Continuous improvement and Kaizen

a Japanese business philosophy of continuous improvement of working practices, personal efficiency, etc.

Gantt Chart

a chart in which a series of horizontal lines shows the amount of work done or production completed in certain periods of time in relation to the amount planned for those periods. A Gantt chart is a type of bar chart that illustrates a project schedule. Gantt charts illustrate the start and finish dates of the terminal elements and summary elements of a project.

Blocking

A process is blocked when the process cannot give its completed parts to the next buffer or process. The idea is that a blocked process indicates a bottleneck downstream

Fishbone Diagram

A fishbone diagram, also called a cause and effect diagram or Ishikawa diagram, is a visualization tool for categorizing the potential causes of a problem in order to identify its root causes.

Finished Goods

A good purchased as a "raw material" goes into the manufacture of a product. A good only partially completed during the manufacturing process is called "work in process". When the good is completed as to manufacturing but not yet sold or distributed to the end-user, it is called a "finished good".

Sensei

A master teacher of lean techniques. Similar in experience to a Black Belt or Master Black Belt in the Six Sigma methodology but more focused on facilitation and teaching than on actual practice.

Process innovation

A process innovation is the implementation of a new or significantly improved production or delivery method. This includes significant changes in techniques, equipment and/or software

Starving Process

A process is starved when the process is waiting for new parts to arrive. starved process indicates a bottleneck upstream.

Production Batch

Batch production is a technique used in manufacturing, in which the object in question is created stage by stage over a series of workstations, and different batches of products are made.

Batch Production

Batch production is a technique used inmanufacturing, in which the object in question is created stage by stage over a series of workstations, and different batches of products are made

Setup/changeover time

Period required to prepare a device, machine, process, or system for it to be ready to function or accept a job. It is a subset of cycle time.

Pipeline Inventory

Pipeline inventory refers to those products that are in the company's shipping chain that have yet to reach their ultimate destination. While the items are in transit, they are still considered to be part of the shipper's inventory if the recipient has yet to pay for them.

PDCA

Plan , Do, Study, Act

Poka Yoke

Poka-yoke [poka joke] is a Japanese term that means "mistake-proofing" or "inadvertent error prevention". The key word in the second translation, often omitted, is "inadvertent". ... A poka-yoke is any mechanism in a lean manufacturing process that helps an equipment operator avoid (yokeru) mistakes (poka).

Process improvement

Process Improvement is the proactive task of identifying, analyzing and improving upon existing business processes within an organization for optimization and to meet new quotas or standards of quality.

Balanced Line

Process Steps w/ similar utilization rates

Unbalanced Line

Process steps w/ dissimilar utilization rates

Operating rate

Rate at which a factory or plant utilizes its capacity.

Raw Materials

Raw materials are materials or substances used in the primary production or manufacturing of goods.

Sakichi Toyoda

Sakichi Toyoda established the Toyoda spinning and weaving company in the year 1918. Sakichi Toyoda was one of the initial contributors of success towards the famous Toyota Production system that aims at eliminating all the wastes, by propounding the Jikoda concept. Jikoda- 'automation with a human touch' means to facilitate quality at source.

Number of Kanban

The number of kanbans defines the performance of a pull system. If you use too few, you will have constant problems with interruptions and missed deliveries or idle workers and processes. If you use too many, you waste space and money for inventory. Of course, if you have the choice between missed deliveries/idle workers or two more parts on the shop floor, I would go for two more parts. Hence in kanban calculations, it is customary to err on the conservative side and, in case of doubt, use more kanbans.

Processing time

The period during which one or more inputs are transformed into a finished product by a manufacturing procedure. A business will typically seek to minimize its process time for a particular manufactured good without compromising quality to the point where consumers would purchase less of it.

Transfer Batch

The transfer batch size refers to the number of units in operations management that move as a group from operation to operation. ... The driver performs both of the transfer operations. In this process map, each operation has its own waiting station for work in process (WIP).

Delay Time

Time traps or delays in a process causing lead time to increase

Value added time

Value added time is made up of processes that improve products. The only value added time process in the cycle time example is the process time. This is the amount of time it takes to actually produce the product. Obviously, production time is a value added time because it creates a product from raw materials

Value stream mapping

Value stream mapping is a lean manufacturing or lean enterprise technique used to document, analyze and improve the flow of information or materials required to produce a product or service for a customer.

Visual Management

Visual management is a workplace that is a self-ordering, self-explaining, self-regulating and self-improving environment where what is suppose to happen does, on time, every time because of visual solutions.