Lean Lingo Primer

This document intends to provide a primer for people new to lean and lean manufacturing allowing them to get a basic understanding of the language used. This is not meant to educate people on how to use the principles, rules, concepts and tools.

• Lean Definition
• Lean Principles
• Lean Rules
• Lean Concepts
• Lean Tools

Lean Definition

No definition is complete, but they are important to help communication, as this definition does:

Lean is an integrated approach to designing and improving work towards a customer-focused ideal state through the engagement of all people aligned by common principles and practices.

Lean Principles

Lean Principles guide our thinking, our decision making and the way we see things. It is important in a lean environment to have shared thinking, and these lean principles are the foundation for that shared thinking. Missing this element is the cause of many lean failures.

1. Directly observe work as activities, connections and flows
2. Systematic waste elimination
3. Systematic problem solving
4. Establish high agreement of both what and how
5. Create a learning organization

Lean Rules

Lean rules are a guide, helping us as we design, operate and improve our organizations. They help us understand in which direction to go when looking at our processes. These rules were originally articulated through the research of H. Kent Bowen and Steven Spears but are modified for ease of use and memory.

1. Structure every ACTIVITY
2. Clearly CONNECT every customer-supplier
3. Specify and simplify every FLOW path
4. Improve through EXPERIMENTATION.

Lean Concepts

Lean concepts is not necessarily a tool that we would implement but a state or condition that we would strive for. For example, a "balanced diet" is a concept to strive for but a specific diet name or structure would be a tool to help us achieve that concept.

• Jidoka:
  Also referred to as autonomation, it is adding the human element of being able to identify problems and either stop for correction or self-correct before moving onto the next step.



• One-Piece Flow / Continuous Flow:
  The ideal state for any process is to move away from traditional batching of work, whether material or information, and flow work continuously, one element at a time. This reduces many types of waste, particularly inventory.



• Pull:
  In order to improve continuous flow and reduce the waste of overproduction, processes should "pull" what they need from the previous step in the process, and only that triggers new actions.



• PDCA:
  Plan-Do-Check-Act means that whether solving a problem or building a plan everyone should follow this process to ensure learning and success towards the goal.



• Visual Management:
  Visual management is simultaneously a tool and a concept. The ideal state is that all employees, operators, and management should be able to manage every aspect of the process at-a-glace using visual data, signals and guides.



• Value-Added:
  Value-adding tasks are only those tasks which (1) the customer is willing to pay for, (2) transform the product or service and (3) are done right the first time.



• Waste Elimination:
  Eliminating waste from the process is the goal of many lean tools and should be an on-going effort in itself. This comes in the form of the seven types of waste: overproduction, waiting, inventory, overprocessing, motion, transportation and defects.

Lean Tools

Lean tools are proven practices that help us move closer to our ideal state, help us apply the four Lean Rules, and are consistent with Lean Principles. This section does not articulate the HOW of these tools, it simply defines several, but not all, of them.

• 5S:
  5S's are adapted from 5 Japanese words that start with 's' but have been rewritten as Sift, Sweep, Sort, Sanitize and Sustain. It helps us organize what we need and eliminate what we don't allowing us to identify problems quickly.



• 5 Why's:
  The five whys is a method of solving a problem by asking why the problem occurred, and then why did that cause occur, 5 times until you get to the root cause of a problem.



• Andon:
  The andon cord is the ability for an operator to pull a cord that triggers a horn and light which tells their team leader or supervisor that they need help or support. Once provided, the team leader can pull the cord to keep production moving.



• Cell:
  An arrangement of work (machines, people, method and material) so that processing steps are sequentially done in next-door steps one at a time in order to improve efficiency, reduce waste and improve communication.



• Error Proofing:
  Error proofing is also known as poka-yoke or mistake proofing. It involves the redesign of equipment or processes to prevent problems from occurring or moving on to the next step.



• Hoshin Kanri:
  A strategic planning process to establish high agreement and align people in a common direction with agreed upon methods to improve.



• Kanban:
  Kanban, often in the form of cards, are a signal that a downstream or customer process can use to request a specific amount of a specific part from the upstream, or supply, process.



• Kaizen:
  Kaizen is a structured process to engage those closest to the process to improve both the effectiveness and efficiency of the process. Its goals are often to remove waste and add standardization.



• Preventive Maintenance:
  Simplifying and structuring maintenance activities to prevent problems rather than react to them can increase capacity and improve continuous flow.



• Scoreboards:
  Scoreboards are visual management of safety, quality, delivery and cost metrics including analysis and action plans used to help shop floor teams manage their own process.



• Setup Reduction:
  The time it takes to changeover equipment from one product to the next is a major barrier to continuous flow, and setup reduction seeks the reduction or elimination of that time. This is also known as SMED, or Single-Minute Exchange of Dies.



• Six Sigma:
  Six Sigma is a method and a set of tools to reduce variation in processes, particularly quality, using mostly statistical tools. Its primary method is DMAIC: Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve and Control.



• SWIs:
  SWIs, or Standard Work Instructions, are a visual method of structuring every job, providing easy-access to key information for operators and allowing for continuous improvement.



• Value Stream Mapping:
  This structured process helps managers understand the flow of both material and information through their operation and develop plans to move them closer to the ideal state.