Administrative Processes

Administrative processes substantially contribute to a company’s costs. Obviously, it depends on the company, but estimates commonly attribute 60-80% of expenses to administrative processes. Administrative processes are the office tasks that are required to keep a company humming along. Administrative processes include human resources, marketing, and accounting. Basically, anything that Read more…

Work-In-Process

Work-in-process (sometimes written as work-in-process and sometimes called work in progress) is a product or service that is partially completed. These goods have had something done to them, so are no longer considered raw materials or component parts. Lean attempts to minimize the amount of work in process to keep Read more…

Variation

Variation is the enemy of processes. Variation in inputs or in the process itself causes variation in the output of the process. And that variation is perceived as poor quality. The layman’s definition of variation is simply fluctuation. More advanced definitions of variation categorize it in two ways. Common cause Read more…

Stopwatch

Everyone, of course, knows what a stopwatch is. They may not, though, understand why someone is standing over them with one. In a Lean company, processes are based on facts and data. One of those facts is the time it takes to accomplish a task. Unfortunately, people who are highly Read more…

Specifications

Specifications are the stated design parameters of a product or service. Specifications can cover any of a variety of features, from physical dimensions, to operating range, to battery life. Some specifications are given with a margin of error, such as “12.00 +/- 0.10 inches”. Other specs are given with a Read more…

Repeatability

Repeatability is the ability for the same individual or team to get identical results from a process time after time. Essentially, repeatability is the opposite of output variation. When processes are not repeatable, the problem falls into three basic categories. A variation in inputs causes poor repeatability. A poor process Read more…

Quality

In Lean, quality is often considered to be “good parts”. That is important because quality parts are a necessary condition to create flow. In a broader sense, quality has several different meanings. Conformance to Spec. Does the product do what it says it will do? Does it match the physical Read more…

Productivity

Productivity is the ratio of output to input. The basic equation is: Productivity = Output / Input When the output is high relative to the inputs, the process is thought of as productive. While there are some standard productivity metrics, such as parts per labor hour, the choice is really Read more…