Lexicon Term
Chief Engineer
The term used at Toyota for the program manager with total responsibility for the development of a product line; previously known by the Japanese term…
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Coaching
Helping others develop the problem-solving capability required for implementing lean tools and principles and building a company culture of continuous performance improvement. In lean management,…
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Continuous Flow
Producing and moving one item at a time (or a small and consistent batch of items) through a series of processing steps as continuously as…
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Lexicon Term
Cross-Dock
A facility that sorts and recombines a variety of inbound items from many suppliers for outbound shipment to many customers, such as assembly plants, distributors,…
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Cycle Time
Cycle time is the time required to produce a part or complete a process, as timed by actual measurement. Cycle Time-Related Terms Involving Time Effective…
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Dashboard
A one-page measurement tool comprising the critical few end-of-pipe (downstream) and process (upstream) measures related to a strategy or action plan (see illustration). It helps…
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Lexicon Term
Demand Amplification
The tendency in any multistage process for production orders received by each upstream process to be more erratic than actual production or sales at the…
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Design-In
Collaboration between a customer and a supplier to design both a component and its manufacturing process. Typically the customer provides cost and performance targets (sometimes…
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Downtime
Production time lost due to planned or unplanned stoppages. Planned downtime includes scheduled stoppages for activities such as beginning-of-the-shift production meetings, changeovers to produce other…
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Efficiency
Meeting exact customer requirements with the minimum amount of resources. Apparent Efficiency vs. True EfficiencyTaiichi Ohno illustrated the common confusion between apparent efficiency and true…
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Error-Proofing
Methods that help operators avoid mistakes in their work caused by choosing the wrong part, leaving out a part, installing a part backwards, etc. Also…
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Every Product Every Interval
The frequency with which different part numbers are produced in a production process or system. If a machine is changed over in a sequence so…
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Fill-Up System
A pull production system in which preceding (supplier) processes produce only enough to replace—or fill up—product withdrawn by following (customer) processes.
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First In, First Out (FIFO)
First In, First Out (FIFO) is the principle and practice of maintaining precise production and conveyance sequence by ensuring that the first part to enter…
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Lexicon Term
5S
5S refers to five related terms, beginning with an S sound, describing workplace practices conducive to visual control and lean production. The five terms in…
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5 Whys
5 Whys is the practice of asking why repeatedly whenever a problem is encountered in order to get beyond the obvious symptoms to discover the…
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Fixed-Position Stop System
A method of addressing problems on assembly lines by stopping the line at the end of the work cycle—that is, at a fixed position—if a…
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Lexicon Term
Flow Production
The production system Henry Ford introduced at his Highland Park, Michigan, plant in 1913. The objective of flow production was to drastically reduce product throughput…
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Four Ms
The variables that a production system manipulates to produce value for customers. The first three are resources, the fourth is the way the resources are…
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