Operations

OEE, Kaizen, MES and more, with formulas you can compute

116 entries

Takt TimeTakt TimeTakt time is the available production time divided by customer demand. It gives the rate at which a product must be completed to match demand, and is used as the pacing reference for a lean production system. For example, 480 available minutes per day divided by 240 units of daily demand gives a takt time of two minutes.
Theory of ConstraintsTheory of ConstraintsTheory of Constraints is a management philosophy and set of tools for organizational change developed by Eliyahu Goldratt and popularized in the 1984 book The Goal by Goldratt and Jeff Cox. It concentrates on improving profits by managing constraints, which are factors that prevent a company from achieving its goals. Its primary focus is removing or managing constraints to improve throughput.
Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a set of techniques that aims to keep every machine in a production process able to perform its required tasks. It requires participation from all employees, addresses the six major equipment losses, and covers the total life cycle of equipment. Operators take part in routine maintenance, improvement projects, and simple repairs.
Total Quality Management (TQM)Total Quality ManagementA management approach in which all departments, employees and managers are responsible for continuously improving quality so that products and services meet or exceed customer expectations. Its earlier form, Total Quality Control (TQC), uses the plan-do-check-act (PDCA) cycle to manage processes and statistical tools to solve problems that arise. The methodology and its tools are used by employees during kaizen activities and form a subsystem of lean.
Toyota Genchi genbutsuGenchi genbutsuGenchi genbutsu is a Toyota practice of understanding a condition by confirming information or data through personal observation at the source. A decision maker goes to the shop floor to observe the process and interact with workers to confirm data and understand the situation, rather than relying only on computer data or information from others.
Toyota Production SystemToyota Production SystemThe Toyota Production System is a production system developed by Toyota Motor Corporation to provide quality, low cost, and short lead time by eliminating waste. It has two pillars, just-in-time and jidoka, and is maintained through standardized work and kaizen following PDCA. Development is credited to Taiichi Ohno, with concepts rooted in earlier work by Sakichi Toyoda and Kiichiro Toyoda.
Training Within Industry (TWI)TWITraining Within Industry (TWI) is a set of training programs developed in the United States during WWII to hire and train large numbers of new workers replacing those who had gone to war. It consists of three programs called the J programs: Job Instruction, Job Methods and Job Relations. Job Instruction, a four-step method for teaching a job correctly, safely and consistently, is still the primary training tool used by Toyota team leaders worldwide.
True northTrue northTrue north is an organization's strategic and philosophical vision or purpose. It acts as a bond that can hold both hard business goals, such as revenue and profits, and broadbrush visionary objectives that appeal to the heart.
Value Stream MappingValue Stream MappingValue stream mapping is a diagramming method that records all material and information flow steps needed to bring a product from order to delivery. A team first draws a current state map of actual conditions, then a future state map showing the target flow, and uses the maps to locate and remove waste. Toyota developed the tool, which it calls a material and information flow diagram, as part of the Toyota Production System.
Value streamValue streamA value stream is all of the actions, both value-creating and nonvalue-creating, required to bring a product from concept to launch and from order to delivery. These actions include processing information from the customer and transforming the product on its way to the customer.
Visual managementVisual managementVisual management is the placement in plain view of tools, parts, production activities, and indicators of production system performance. It allows the status of the system to be understood at a glance by everyone involved.
Work elementWork elementA work element is one of the distinct steps required to complete one cycle at a workstation; it is the smallest increment of work that can be moved to another operator. Breaking work into elements helps to identify and eliminate waste that is hidden within an operator's cycle. The elements can be distributed in relation to takt time to create continuous flow.
Work in process (WIP)Work in process (WIP)Work in process is the items of work that sit between processing steps. In lean systems, standardized work in process is the minimum number of parts, including units inside machines, needed to keep a cell or process flowing smoothly.
YokotenYokotenYokoten is a Japanese term for deploying concepts, ideas, or policies horizontally across a company. It is used to make sure that a finding at one location is checked and applied at all other relevant locations. The document illustrates it with a defective valve found on one machine: yokoten is the process of examining all similar valves in the facility and in other relevant facilities for the same defect.
industrial control system (ICS)industrial control system (ICS)An industrial control system (ICS) is an information system used to control industrial processes such as manufacturing, product handling, production, and distribution. It includes supervisory control and data acquisition (SCADA) systems, distributed control systems (DCS), and smaller control systems using programmable logic controllers (PLC). An ICS combines control components such as electrical, mechanical, hydraulic, and pneumatic components that act together to achieve an industrial objective such as manufacturing or transportation of matter or energy.
p chart (proportion defective)p chartThe p chart is an attributes control chart that plots the proportion of nonconforming items in each sample. It is used when items are classified as conforming or nonconforming, and its statistical basis is the binomial distribution. Control limits are placed at three standard deviations of the sample proportion around the process fraction nonconforming p.