Lean Management glossaryLean glossary
Lean Management terms explained simply, with what they change on the ground. This glossary accompanies the nomuri solutions.
- Muda 無駄
- Waste: any activity that uses resources without creating value for the customer (waiting, transport, inventory, rework…).
- Mura 斑
- Unevenness in workload: successive peaks and troughs. Mura often causes muri during the peaks.
- Muri 無理
- Overload: asking a person or a machine for more than they can reasonably give. It is what nomuri targets. Read the concept
- Takt time
- The pace needed to keep up with demand: available time divided by customer demand. A station whose workload exceeds takt is overloaded.
- Yamazumi chart 山積み
- “Stacked up” in Japanese. A bar chart that stacks each station’s tasks and compares them with takt time.
- Line balancing
- Spreading tasks across stations so that each one works under takt, with no bottleneck or overload. You can practise it with Manufacture Enème.
- Heijunka 平準化
- Levelling production or workload over time to remove mura and peaks of overload.
- Kaizen 改善
- Continuous improvement in small steps, led by the teams themselves.
- Andon 行灯
- A signal that flags a problem immediately so that help arrives. In Kareko, andon is the last level of response to understaffing.
- PDCA
- Plan, Do, Check, Act: Deming’s cycle for problem-solving and improvement. Lean Sensei guides each step.
- 5 Whys
- Asking “why?” several times in a row to trace a symptom back to its root cause.
- Ishikawa diagram
- A fishbone diagram that sorts the possible causes of a problem (methods, people, materials, machines, environment…).
- Skill mix
- The spread of qualifications within a care team (ICUS, IDE, ASSC, AUX…). Kareko checks the quotas by role on every shift.
- Kamishibai 紙芝居
- A visual audit card system that ensures standards are checked regularly on the floor.