Lean Bronze flashcards

33 cards. Read the term and the definition here. The deck at the top of this page is optional.

Muda

Japanese term for waste: any activity that consumes resources but creates no value for the customer. The seven classic wastes are transportation, inventory, motion, waiting, overproduction, overprocessing, and defects.

Mura

Unevenness or variability in work volume, demand, or process output. Leveling the workload reduces mura, which in turn reduces the need to hold buffer inventory and capacity.

Muri

Overburden placed on people, equipment, or processes beyond their reasonable capacity. Muri often produces defects and safety problems, so it must be addressed alongside waste elimination.

Gemba

The actual place where value is created and work happens. Observing the real process with the people who run it reveals facts that reports and meeting-room discussion typically hide.

Five Lean principles

Specify value from the customer's view, map the value stream, create flow, establish pull from the customer, and pursue perfection. They form the sequence from understanding value to continuous improvement.

Kaizen vs. kaikaku

Kaizen is incremental, low-cost improvement made continuously by the people doing the work. Kaikaku is radical, large-scale transformation, often redesigning a whole value stream at once.

Respect for people

A core Lean pillar meaning the people who do the work are engaged in designing and improving it, with problems treated as process issues rather than personal faults.

Value-added test

Work is value-added only if the customer cares about it, it physically or informationally changes the product or service, and it is done correctly the first time.

PDCA cycle

Plan sets the problem, target, and root cause; Do runs a small trial; Check compares results to the target; Act standardizes the gain or revises the approach. The cycle then repeats.

DMAIC

Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, Control. A structured improvement sequence used when the problem has an unclear cause and data can be collected to verify root causes and results.

Five Whys

An iterative questioning technique that asks why repeatedly to move from a visible symptom to a systemic root cause. It stops when the cause is actionable and controllable.

Fishbone diagram

A cause-and-effect diagram organizing possible causes into branches such as man, machine, material, method, measurement, and environment. It structures brainstorming before data collection.

Pareto analysis

A ranking technique showing that a small number of causes usually produce most of the effect. Bars are sorted by frequency or cost so improvement effort targets the vital few.

A3 report

A one-page structured story: background, current condition, target condition, root cause analysis, countermeasures, implementation plan, and follow-up. It supports dialogue and shared understanding.

Countermeasure

A targeted action aimed at a verified root cause, treated as a testable hypothesis. It is checked against the expected result and adjusted rather than assumed to be a permanent solution.

Standard work elements

Standard work specifies takt time, the work sequence within that time, and the standard in-process inventory required. It provides the baseline against which any improvement is measured.

Poka-yoke

Error-proofing built into the process so a mistake cannot be made or cannot pass to the next step. Examples include fixtures that only accept correct orientation and sensors that stop the line.

Takt time

Available production time divided by customer demand for that period. It sets the pace a process must meet to satisfy demand without overproducing.

Leader standard work

A documented daily and weekly routine for leaders, including gemba walks, tiered meetings, and process audits. It makes sustaining improvement part of normal management rather than an extra project.

Tiered daily management

Layered short meetings where team issues escalate upward through defined levels, each with an owner and a response time. Problems get resolved at the lowest capable level.

Visual management

Workplace displays such as boards, andon, and floor markings that make standard versus actual status visible at the point of work, so deviation is noticed without asking anyone.

Hoshin kanri

Policy deployment: a few breakthrough objectives cascade into annual targets and daily actions. Catchball dialogue aligns levels and surfaces constraints before commitments are fixed.

Catchball

The two-way negotiation of objectives, targets, and resources between management levels during planning. It builds ownership and reveals capacity limits before targets are locked in.

Blame-free problem escalation

A norm in which reporting a problem is treated as helpful rather than punishable. It increases early detection, because people hide defects and near-misses when they fear consequences.

Job instruction (TWI)

A four-step training method: prepare the learner, present the work, let them try it, and follow up. Consistent instruction is how standard work survives staff turnover.

Sustainment test

An improvement is sustained only if it is embedded in standard work, visual controls, and leader routines, so it survives staff turnover and a change of leadership.

Value stream map

A diagram of material and information flow from customer request to delivery, showing process boxes, inventory counts, lead times, and information flow, used to find system-level waste.

Process cycle efficiency

Value-added time divided by total lead time, expressed as a percentage. Most office and service value streams score in the low single digits, showing large improvement potential.

Push versus pull

Push releases work based on a forecast or schedule. Pull authorizes work only when a downstream customer consumes it, typically signaled by a kanban, limiting work in process.

Kanban rules

A downstream process withdraws what it needs; the upstream produces only what was withdrawn; no kanban means no production; and the number of kanban in circulation is limited.

Heijunka

Leveling of production volume and product mix over time. It reduces unevenness, shrinks buffers, and makes pull signals and standard work practical across the value stream.

SMED

Single-minute exchange of die: separate internal from external setup work, convert internal steps to external, then streamline what remains, targeting changeovers measured in single-digit minutes.

Little's Law

Work in process equals throughput multiplied by lead time. At a fixed throughput, reducing WIP shortens lead time proportionally, which is why limiting WIP is a core flow lever.