Lexicon Term
Muda, Mura, Muri
Muda, Mura, and Muri are terms often used together in the Toyota Production System (and called the Three Ms) that collectively describe wasteful practices to…
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Lexicon Term
A-B Control
A way to regulate the working relationships between two machines or operations to control overproduction and ensure balanced use of resources. In the Illustration, neither…
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Lexicon Term
A3 Report
An A3 Report is a Toyota-pioneered practice of getting the problem, the analysis, the corrective actions, and the action plan down on a single sheet…
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ABC Production Analysis
Segmenting part numbers into groups based on demand. Lean thinkers use this analysis to decide how much and for which products to hold inventory. A…
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Basic Stability
Having essential capability, availability, and flexibility in the 4Ms — manpower, machines, materials, and methods. A lack of basic stability in a process prevents improvements…
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Batch-and-Queue
A mass production approach to operations in which large lots (batches) of items are processed and moved to the next process—regardless of whether they are…
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Lexicon Term
Brownfield
An existing production facility, usually managed in accordance with mass production thinking.
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Capital Linearity
A philosophy for designing and buying production machinery so that small amounts of capacity can be added or subtracted as demand changes. In this way,…
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Cell
The location of processing steps for a product immediately adjacent to each other so that parts, documents, etc., can be processed in very nearly continuous…
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Lexicon Term
Inventory
Materials (and information) present along a value stream between processing steps. Physical inventories usually are categorized by position in the value stream and by purpose. Raw…
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Lexicon Term
Overproduction
Producing more, sooner or faster than is required by the next process. Ohno considered overproduction to be the most grievous form of waste because it…
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