Unevenness or Mura: Lean Glossary

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Unevenness or Mura: What Is It?

Unevenness or Mura in an operation is when a process has excessive wait time followed by excessively busy periods.  In other words, team-mates are forced to “hurry and then wait”.

Not only does Unevenness in a process reduce morale, it is often a wasteful use of team-mates time and resources.

Unevenness can be reduced by using Line Balancing, working towards One Piece Flow, and reducing Re-Work in a process.

By David McLachlan

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Total Productive Maintenance (TPM): Lean Glossary

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Total Productive Maintenance (TPM): What Is It?

TPM is a set of techniques used to keeps machines in good order, reduce downtime, increase quality and capacity and the life of the machine.

The four steps for TPM are very similar to a Lean Transformation:

  1. Return Equipment to Reliable Condition: Perform 5s to remove unnecessary tools or debris, change filters or lubricants and create a scheduled maintenance of the desired machine.
  2. Eliminate breakdowns: This means getting rid of the factors that contribute to failure.  Fishbone analysis or the 5 Whys are a great tool for this.
  3. Develop a TPM Information Database: Document all the preventative maintenance procedures and keep them in an easily accessible location.
  4. Eliminate defects: Here we look at ways to make it impossible for our machine to encounter defects or break down in the future.  Poka Yoke and Autonomation are great tools for this.

Often a short Kaizen event will be able to go through all of these steps and get your machines in good standing.

By David McLachlan

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The Four Capabilities: Lean Glossary

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The Four Capabilities: What Are They?

The Four Capabilities are taken from Steven Spears’ book the High Velocity Edge, and they are the capabilities found in high performing leaders.  They are:

  1. Designing work to reveal problems
  2. Containing and solving problems close to the source
  3. Accumulate and share knowledge
  4. Leaders coaching these capabilities in others

While they are not the be-all and end-all of lean techniques and tools, they offer a good insight into Autonomation or Jidoka, which is one of the main pillars of Lean.

By David McLachlan

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Takt Time: Lean Glossary

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Takt Time: What Is It?

Takt time is the rate of demand as determined by the customer, most often calculated by the available production time divided by actual customer demand.

For example if a work day is 8 hours, and customers buy 16 items a day, then takt time is 1/2 an hour.

Takt time should not be confused with Cycle time, which is the total time it takes for a product to move through a process or value stream including queues and rework.

By David McLachlan

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Swim Lane Flow Chart: Lean Glossary

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Swim Lane Flow Chart: What Is It?

A Swim Lane Flow Chart is a method of mapping out a process or value stream so it can be seen at a glance.

Departments, touch points or stations are noted vertically on the left, and the process steps are noted from left to right.  In this way, we see the process move up and down as it moves between departments, and across the page as it moves toward the end customer.

It is customary to include rework percentages for any of the steps, timing of process steps underneath the chart, and queues between steps.

Some people also include Value Stream Map or other process map symbols as necessary, such as system cylinders, emails or decision steps.

By David McLachlan

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Supermarket: Lean Glossary

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Supermarket: What Is It?

A Supermarket in Lean terms is a predetermined standard inventory kept to supply a downstream process.

Keeping no more than is needed, when a supermarket is empty a Kanban is often sent to the supplier to replenish the standard inventory.

Most commonly used with “bins on wheels” in a manufacturing environment, when one bin is emptied by the downstream process it can easily be replaced by another bin full of the same standard inventory.  But it could also be used with a standard inventory of medical supplies, stacks of paper or other items where you know the exact amount needed and only need a small inventory on hand.

A Supermarket is not the same as a FIFO lane, where product is only taken as needed, in order of the oldest first.

By David McLachlan

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Kaizen and Kaizen Events: Lean Glossary

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Kaizen: What Is It?

Kaizen is the Japanese term for “Improvement” and is most often referred to as continuous improvement in English terms.  It applies to a few areas of Lean, such as:

Every Person, Every Day Kaizen

Kaizen every day means Increasing the capability of our team-mates so they are trained to discover and define problems in our process, allowing us to fix them quickly (then work towards putting a long term fix in place).

Kaizen Bursts

Noted on a Value Stream Map, these are ideas for solutions or additional challenges called out during the value stream mapping process, that we note especially.  Noting Kaizen burst ideas ensures we don’t forget these things later on.

Kaizen Events

A Kaizen event is usually a three to five day event that involves team-mates from the front line process and a handful of people unrelated to a process.

We often go through the full Lean transformation during the event, mapping out a process with queues and rework noted, calling out any wastes, performing fishbone analysis or the 5 whys to get to the root cause of problems, using a Pareto Chart to show us where to start, line balancing to balance the flow, and finally putting it all together in a “Future State” value Stream Map that shows a new process and the potential time and dollar savings.

Some companies prefer to hold mini Kaizen events, where team-mates go through the process more quickly (often within one day) or perform different analysis over multiple meetings.

By David McLachlan

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Just In Time: Lean Glossary

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Just in Time: What Is It?

Just in Time production is a system of production that only makes and delivers what is needed, when it is needed.  Simple in theory, it requires in practice a handful of lean elements to come together for successful Just in Time.

The Five main elements of Lean that can be used to create Just in time production are:

  1. Takt time, which is knowing the rate of demand of product from your customer.
  2. Continuous Flow, which is the opposite of batch processing.
  3. A pull system, often facilitated with Kanban triggers and a FIFO Lane or supermarket.
  4. Line balancing, which is combining shorter processes into longer processes to eliminate queues and other wastes.
  5. Removing any or all of the Eight Wastes to improve flow.

All of these things work together in harmony to assist in creating only product that is actually requested.

By David McLachlan

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Gemba: Lean Glossary

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Gemba: What Is It?

The Gemba is the Japanese term for “Actual Place” and is often used as a single word to describe the front lines or where the work is done.  In English it can also be spelled Genba.

“Walking the Gemba” is an important phrase in Lean, and means that we must go to the front lines – where the actual work is done – to see first hand how a process works.  Second hand information, reports or accounting numbers will not do, it must be experienced first hand.

This also means we must get front line staff involved in our change initiative, which can be cone with kaizen events or meetings, mapping a value stream and prompting them to call out wastes and opportunities.

By David McLachlan

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