Glossary

TWI (Training within Industries) – This was a program initiated by the United States to help make the training of unskilled workers more effective.  This program is one of the core principles in lean manufacturing, and can be effectively adapted to skilled tasks such as sales.

Hoshin Kanri – Policy Deployment, policies and rules are essential to progress, without them there is no standard to improve upon.

Kanban – A physical indicator that tells people when products need to be moved.  It is ideal to have one-piece flow, which doesn’t need kanban, but in the “real world” kanban can be very useful to effectively control material flow.

Kaizen – Continual improvement, that is beneficial for all parties.  This is not just pushing work to another department, so that your work is easier.

Gemba – Workplace; this is where the value is added; leaders need to be in the “gemba” to be able to improve it.  This can be the office, the production floor, the hospital, or anywhere else that work takes place.

Takt Time = Available Time / Quantity Demanded ; This is a time used to decide how much time each process should take in order to meet the daily demand

A3 – The name A3 comes from a size of paper common outside of the United States that is roughly 11 x 17 inches in size.  A3 reports are made on one piece of A3 paper using Deming’s PDCA cycle.

Mura - Unevenness

Muri - Overburden

Heijunka – Production Smoothing

Muda – Waste.  Taiichi Ohno believed that there are 7 types of waste; overproduction, transportation, motion, waiting, processing, inventory, and defects.  Other more modern lean thinkers have added the under-utilization of workers skills/ideas.

JIT (Just in Time) – This is one of the pillars of lean manufacturing; when using JIT, products aren’t made until they are needed.  Many different tools are used to make this possible, such as kanban, takt time, heijunka, kaizen, jidoka, and others.

Jidoka – Autonomation; also known as machines with the human touch, Sakichi Toyoda invented this with his looms that had weights on the threads to automatically shut the machine down when the string broke, therefore eliminating waste.

Genchi Gembutsu – Go and see for yourself; this is paramount in lean operations, if there is a problem in the process, you need to go and see it for yourself, instead of relying on reports and other performance indicators.

PDCA (Plan, Do, Check, Act) – This cycle is used create effective plans that will work, instead of first doing something and then fixing it until it works, this is based on planning to make sure it works the first time.

5S (Sort, Set, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain) – A method used to make the workplace more usable. This is not a method to make the workplace neat, but a method to make the workplace more efficient.  Ex. It may be neat to put all of the tools in one location, but if people are walking 500 feet to get to them it defiantly is not efficient.

Andon – A signal that is obvious to everybody.  These are used to notify workers of the status of production (good, or something needs to be resolved).

Poke-Yoke (POH-kah YOH-kay) – Mistake Proofing.  Use simple devices to prevent mistakes, for example a cutout in a piece of cardboard that doesn’t let the wrong part go in the bin, or in an office, different paper sizes with bins that correspond to each paper size (each form would be on a different size paper).

SMED – Single Minute Exchange of Dies; this does not mean in one minute, although the lower the changeover time the better, it means any single digit time (anything less than 10 minutes).  SMED is not accomplished by working faster, but by working smarter.

5 Whys – Ask why 5 times to get to the root of any problem; this problem solving technique should not place blame on the operator, rather it should help both of you to understand the root cause of the problem.

Nemawashi- Laying the groundwork for a project by gathering feedback, and getting support.

Value Stream Mapping – This is a process used to find waste in the system, and to improve the system as a whole, instead of improving individual processes alone.

Key People

W. Edwards Deming – A statistician that studied industry, and employees.  Deming focused on quality, and believed that if you would strive for good quality the quality would improve and costs would gradually fall, however If you strive for cost, quality will suffer, and costs will increase.

Taiichi Ohno – Known by many as the father of Lean (the Toyota Production System).

Frederick Winslow Taylor – The originator of scientific management.  Scientific management believes that there is a best way to do everything and that once that way is found, it should not be deviated from.  This management theory formed a base for TWI, however in TWI you find the best way, and then improve on it when you can, so the standard is used as a baseline to improve.

Shigeo Shingo – A consultant that helped Taiichi Ohno with many lean principles including SMED and poke yoke. 

Henry Ford – Originated flow, which is very important in lean.

Sakichi Toyoda – Founder of Toyota, He started using Jidoka when he put weights on his looms, to sense when a thread broke and stop the production of fabric when that happened, therefore eliminating defects, and allowing one operator to operate multiple machines.

Kiichiro Toyoda – Son of Sakichi Toyoda, he decided to change Toyota into an automobile company from the loom company that it was before.