Master the meaning of lean terms and concepts. Get clear definitions that turn the language of management into practical results in your day-to-day work.
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Leader of a lean transformation with the authority and initiative to undertake the fundamental changes. The change agent, who often comes from outside the organization, does not need in-depth knowledge of lean philosophy at the start of the transformation.
Compare with: Sensei.
Japanese term for "actual place," usually used for the shop floor or any place where value-creating work takes place. Also spelled with an "n": genba.
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A particular type of hands-on workshop in which people "learn by doing." The term literally means "self-study" in Japanese. See : Kaizen Workshop, Toyota Production System.
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Radical, revolutionary improvement of a value stream in order to quickly create more value with less waste. See : Kaizen, PDCA.
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Continuous improvement of an entire value stream or an individual process in order to create more value with less waste. There are two levels of kaizen (Rother and Shook 1999): System or flow kaizen, which focuses on the overall value stream. Led by management.
Process kaizen, which focuses on individual processes. Led by work teams and team leaders.
See : Kaikaku, PDCA, Process Islands, Value Stream Mapping.
See: Lean Promotion Office.
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A group kaizen activity, commonly lasting five days, in which a team identifies and implements significant improvements in a process.
See: Gemba, Jishuken, Kaizen, PDCA.
A five-step thought process proposed by Womack and Jones in 1996 to guide managers through a lean transformation. The principles are: Specify value from the standpoint of the end customer by product family.
Identify all the steps in the value stream for each product family, eliminating, whenever possible, those steps that do not create value.
Make the value-creating steps occur in a continuous sequence so the product will flow smoothly.
As flow is introduced, let customers pull value from the
A support team for a lean transformation, often formed from pre-existing groups in industrial engineering, maintenance, facilities management and quality.
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Any activity that consumes resources without creating value for the customer. Within this general category, it is useful to distinguish between type one muda, consisting of activities that cannot be eliminated immediately, and type two muda, which are activities that can be eliminated quickly through kaizen.
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Three terms often used together in the Toyota Production System (known as "the three Ms") that collectively describe wasteful practices to be eliminated.
See: Heijunka.
Unevenness in an operation, such as ups and downs in the schedule caused not by end-customer demand but by the production system, or an uneven work pace in an operation, causing operators to hurry and then wait.
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Overburdening equipment or operators by requiring them to run at a higher or harder pace, with more force or effort, for a longer period of time than they can withstand.
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Toyota executive considered the chief architect of the Toyota Production System (TPS) and author of several important books on TPS.
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Producing more, sooner, or faster than is required by the next process. Ohno considered overproduction the most serious form of waste because it generates and hides other wastes, such as inventory, defects, and excess transportation.
See: Batch and Queue, Ohno, Seven Wastes.
When a process delivers pure value, as defined by the customer, without any kind of waste. See : PDCA.
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Japanese for teacher. Used by lean thinkers to denote a master of lean knowledge, the result of years of experience in transforming the gemba (the place where the work is done). A sensei must also be a teacher who inspires his or her students and whose teachings are easy to understand. Compare with : Change Agent.
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The process of reducing the time needed to change a process over from one model to another, from the last piece of the previous product to the first good piece of the next product.
See: Changeover, Single-Minute Exchange of Die (SMED).
Taiichi Ohno's categorization of the seven major wastes commonly found in mass production: overproduction, waiting, transportation, processing, inventory, motion and correction.
See: Changeover, Setup Reduction.
An engineer and consultant whose books and teachings were key contributions to the dissemination of the Toyota Production System.
See: Setup Reduction, Single-Minute Exchange of Die - SMED.
A process for changing production equipment over from one part to another in the shortest possible time. SMED refers to the goal of reducing changeover times to a single digit, or less than 10 minutes.
See : Changeovers, Setup Reduction, Shingo.
Establishing precise procedures for the work of each operator in a production process, based on the following three elements: Takt time, which is the rate at which products must be produced to meet customer demand.
The exact work sequence in which an operator performs tasks within takt time.
The standard inventory, including items on the machines, required to keep the process operating smoothly.
See : Kaizen, Operator Balance Chart, PDCA, Takt Time.
See: Muda, Mura, Muri.
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See: Production Preparation Process.
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The son of Sakichi Toyoda, founder of the Toyota group, he led the company's effort to enter the automotive industry in the 1930s. Kiichiro believed it was possible to sustain the entire production process with just the needed stock of products if the preceding process simply responded to the exact needs of the next downstream process. He called this system Just-in-Time, which became one of the two pillars of the Toyota Production System.
See : Toyoda, Sakichi; Toyota Production System.
Founder of the Toyota group, he invented a self-monitoring device for the looms in his factory in the early 20th century that stopped the machines if a thread broke. This innovation allowed one operator to run several machines and led to the concept of Jidoka, which means "automation with human intelligence." It is one of the two pillars of the Toyota Production System.
See : Toyoda, Kiichiro; Toyota Production System.
A production system developed by Toyota Motor Corporation to provide the best quality, the lowest cost and the shortest lead time through the elimination of waste. TPS is built on two pillars, Just-in-Time and Jidoka, and is usually illustrated by the "house" shown below. TPS is maintained and improved through iterations of standardized work and kaizen, following PDCA, or the scientific method.
See : Jidoka; Just-in-Time Production; Lean Production; Ohno, Taiichi.
Any activity that consumes resources but creates no value for the customer. Most activities are waste (muda). There are two types of waste: type 1 and type 2. Type 1 muda creates no value but is unavoidable in a given situation. An example would be inspecting welds to ensure quality.
See : Muda, Seven Wastes.
Go beyond the introductory reading by listening to debates or watching our transformations on video.
It is a glossary of terms and concepts used in lean management. It helps you understand lean terminology by aligning definitions and examples for study, reading and day-to-day application.
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A academia lean do Lean Institute Brasil oferece trilhas de capacitação EaD e presenciais, incluindo o Programa Prático de Formação Lean (PPFL), que ensina a utilizar frameworks consolidados e a aplicá-los resolvendo problemas de negócio reais.
