49 concepts, precisely defined.

Lean

Lean Manufacturing

Lean is an operating philosophy that maximises customer value by systematically removing waste — activities the customer won’t pay for. The method originates in the Toyota Production System (TPS).

Operational Excellence

Operational Excellence (OpEx)

Operational Excellence is the state in which stable, improving operations are the norm — where deviations become visible and are handled systematically by the organisation itself, without depending on individuals or external consultants.

Muda (waste)

Muda / Waste

Muda is Japanese for waste: any activity that consumes resources without creating value for the customer. Lean classically identifies 7 types of waste — transport, inventory, motion, waiting, overproduction, over-processing and defects — often supplemented by an 8th: unused talent.

Gemba

Gemba / Genba

Gemba is Japanese for “the real place” — where value is created: the shop floor, the warehouse, the case handling. A gemba walk is a structured management round on site with the purpose of observing, asking and understanding, not controlling.

Kaizen

Kaizen / Continuous Improvement

Kaizen is Japanese for “change for the better” and denotes continuous improvement in small steps, driven by the employees who work in the process. Its opposite is large, rare improvement projects driven from the outside.

Flow

Flow / Continuous Flow

Flow means an item or a case moves through the process without stops, accumulation or waiting. Perfect flow is one-piece production: each item is processed and passed on immediately.

The pull principle

Pull System

Pull means nothing is produced until the next link in the chain demands it — in contrast to push, where production follows a forecast and is pushed onward. Pull limits overproduction and inventory, because consumption controls production.

Just-in-Time (JIT)

Just-in-Time

Just-in-Time is the principle of producing and delivering exactly what is needed, in the quantity needed, at the time it is needed. JIT is one of the two pillars of the Toyota Production System (the other is jidoka).

Value stream

Value Stream

A value stream is all the activities — value-adding and non-value-adding — required to bring a product or service from order to delivery. The value stream is the unit of analysis in Lean: this is where waste and flow become visible.

OEE

Overall Equipment Effectiveness

OEE (Overall Equipment Effectiveness) measures how large a share of the planned production time actually produces good parts. OEE = Availability × Performance × Quality. World class is reckoned at ≈ 85%; typical unoptimised plants sit around 60% (Nakajima, 1988).

The six big losses

Six Big Losses

The six big losses are TPM’s classic categorisation of equipment losses: (1) breakdowns, (2) changeover and adjustment, (3) minor stops, (4) reduced speed, (5) start-up defects and (6) process defects/scrap. The three pairs correspond to OEE’s three factors: availability, performance and quality.

Availability

Availability is OEE’s first factor: the share of the planned production time in which the equipment is actually running. Availability = running time ÷ planned production time. Losses: breakdowns, changeovers and other stops.

Lead time

Lead Time

Lead time is the total time from an order or item starting in the process until it is finished and delivered — including all waiting and inventory time. It differs from process time, which is only the time actively worked on the item.

Takt time

Takt Time

Takt time is the rhythm of customer demand: the available production time divided by customer demand in the same period. If 400 parts must be delivered in a shift with 480 available minutes, the takt is 1.2 minutes per part.

Cycle time

Cycle Time

Cycle time is the time a process actually takes per part — from one part being finished to the next being finished. Compared with the takt time, cycle time shows whether a station can keep up with customer demand.

Bottleneck

Bottleneck / Constraint

The bottleneck is the process in a chain with the lowest capacity, which thereby limits the throughput of the entire system. An hour lost at the bottleneck is an hour lost for the whole factory — capacity gained everywhere else is an illusion.

WIP (work in progress)

Work in Progress

WIP (Work in Progress) is all work that has been started but not finished: items between processes, cases under handling, orders in the system. High WIP lengthens lead time proportionally (Little’s law), ties up capital and hides problems.

SPC

Statistical Process Control

SPC (Statistical Process Control) monitors a process with control charts that distinguish natural variation (always present) from special variation (which has an identifiable cause). Reaction is required only for special variation — adjusting for natural variation makes the process worse.

KPI

Key Performance Indicator

A KPI (Key Performance Indicator) is a metric that measures performance against a target in an area critical to the business — e.g. delivery performance, OEE, complaint rate or absence. Good KPIs are few, influenceable and updated close to real time.

Daily Management

Daily Management System (DMS)

Daily Management is a system of daily, structured routines — board meetings, target follow-up, escalation and gemba walks — that make deviations visible and handled within 24 hours. It is the nervous system of operations: this is where problems are discovered while they are small.

Board meeting / huddle

Board Meeting / Huddle

A board meeting is a short, standing meeting in front of an operations board where the team reviews yesterday’s performance against targets, today’s plan and current deviations, and agrees who does what by tomorrow. Typically 10-15 minutes, same time every day.

Tiered meetings

Tiered Meetings

Tiered meetings are a cascade of short daily meetings across several organisational levels: Tier 1 in the team at the line, Tier 2 at department level, Tier 3 at site/management level. Deviations that can’t be solved at one level are escalated to the next — the same day.

Visual management

Visual Management

Visual management is arranging the workplace so that normal state and deviation can be seen with the naked eye in seconds — marked places, min/max levels, colour codes, andon lights and operations boards. The goal: anyone can see the status without asking or opening a system.

Operational maturity

Operational Maturity

Operational maturity describes how systematically an organisation runs and improves its operations — typically on a staircase from firefighting (everything is reactive) through reactive and visible operations to stable operations and continuous improvement, where the organisation improves itself.

Anchoring / sustainment

Sustainment / Anchoring

Anchoring is what decides whether an improvement still works a year on: standards owned locally, routines that run without external help, and leaders who follow up as a habit, not as a project. Improvements without anchoring have a half-life of months.