Glossary
Lean Terminology:

  • Muda - Waste, any activity which uses resources but creates no value.  These are often defined as the 7 wastes:
Overproduction - making more product than the customer requires (the customer can be internal - the next work center, or                                external)
Waiting -  This occurs when the activities are not balanced.  Note: not all waiting is bad thing.
Transportation - A result of poor layout and often occurs in batch & queue environments where large batch are moved
                              from department to department.
Processing Itself - Conducting more operations than a customer requires.  Usually due to poor specifications or in
                             reaction to quality issues.
Inventory - This occurs when there are long lead times and batch & queue planning methods are used.
Motion - Due to poor work center layout
Making Bad Product - Rework or scrap is always a waste, not only of the material but of the processing time, particularly
so if defective material is fed to the operations constraint.

  • Value Stream - All of the actions required to produce a product for a customer.  These can be defined into 3 broad categories
Problem-solving task- Everything it takes to create a product for the marketplace from concept to product launch.
Information management task- This the order taking to delivery.
Physical transformation task- The actual production of the product.

  • Flow - The goal of Lean Manufacturing is to drive the waste (muda) out of the value-stream then make the remaining value
added steps flow.  Ideally, the process would be so lean, that one piece flow could be achieved, meaning that the value stream
could produce a "batch of one" where changing between different products would so insignificant that a "batch of one" could
be achieved allow and organization to produce exactly what is ordered.

  • Pull - Not producing a product until one is required.  The customer sets the pace of production.  Sell one; build one.

  • Kaizen - Incremental continuous improvement. 

  • Kaikaku - This is extremely quick continuous improvement, usually requiring moving processing equipment into cells to create
     flow

  • 5 S's - Applying the 5 S's create a work environment appropriate for lean.
Sort (Seiri) - Eliminate unneeded tools, parts and instruction from the work center
Set In Order (Seiton) - Create effective storage for the items that remain.  Often using shadow boards, outlines, etc... for easy
identification.
      Shine (Seiso) - Clean the work center
Standardize (Seiketsu) - Going back through the first 3 S's for all workcenters at specific intervals to ensure they are all
standardized
Sustain (Shitsuke) - Repeating steps 1 through 4 until it habit

  • Heijunka - Leveling your scheduling process to better correspond to longer term demand.

  • SMED - Single Minute Exchange of Dies.  Created by Shigeo Shingo to conduct changeovers (even on very large &
  complicated equipment) in less than ten minutes. 
  One-Touch Setup refers specifically to setup taking less than a minute.

  • TPM  - Total Productive Maintenance.  Created by Nippondenso to ensure all equipment in a production process is always
ready to perform so production is never interrupted.

  • Poka-yoke - Error proofing a process or procedure to stop the a part from moving on in the process if it is defective.
  Sometimes called baka-yoke.

  • Process Villages - Grouping equipment together by similar process.  (i.e., welding department, drilling department, milling
department, etc...)

  • QFD - Quality Functional Deployment.  A tool utilizing the customer requirements to determine the specifications for a product.
It utilizes perspectives from multiple areas of expertise (engineering, production, etc...)

  • Takt time - Sets the production rate equal to the rate at which the customer requires your product.

  • 5 Why's - Driving down to the root cause of a problem by asking, "Why?" five times. 




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