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For the purposes of continuous improvement, a product family is a group of products that follows a similar series of process steps. The value in this type of organization is that it supports flow. Similar products can be combined onto a mixed model production line. Generally speaking, the higher the Read more…
Baselines are essential to improvements. They are the starting point for a process to be changed or are reference points for ongoing processes. Baselines can be used in two main ways. First, they can be used to establish current conditions prior to a project. This is essential to knowing if Read more…
People should not be standing watching machines or pulling levers. They are far more intelligent than that. Give them jobs that use that intelligence and sever their ties to machines. Focusing on this premise, that workers are more than just machines, shows great respect for people, one of the central Read more…
Scalability is the ability to easily ramp up or down to changing requirements. The term is in common use in information technology, specifically in reference to the ability of a system to grow to accommodate increasing traffic. In a continuous improvement sense, it is the ability of a process to Read more…
ABC inventory is a method of grouping materials based on cost and usage to assign them different inventory management processes. Typically, the segmentation is done by calculating out the annual usage of the parts and labeling the top 70% of them (by total cost) as ‘A’ parts, the next 25% Read more…
Control limits are lines established 3 standard deviations from the mean on a control chart. Keep in mind that the control chart depicts averages, so exhibits a normal distribution. (See Central Limit Theorem) 99.7% of all random variation (common cause) will fall within the upper and lower control limits. Outliers Read more…
When a process is said to be in control, statistically speaking, that means that all the variation can be attributed to common causes. All of the observed variation is just a function of the natural randomness built into a system or process. In a nutshell, an in control process is Read more…
A control, or control group is a tool used to confirm whether changes are actually having an effect. The control group is exposed to the same conditions as the test group with the exception of the variable that is being examined. For example, you may be experimenting whether increasing tire Read more…
Containment is an interim quality management step. When a problem is identified, the organization must take steps to prevent defects from escaping. Containment is a method of systematically identifying and quarantining all materials that are suspect until they can be confirmed not to contain defective items. Note that this is Read more…
A competitive advantage is a condition through which one organization has to spend fewer resources to get the same benefit as a competitor (or, of course, gets more benefit for spending the same amount of resources.) This advantage can be because of a perception of higher quality products, because of Read more…
Making changes can be a rather large challenge. This is especially true when you are committed to making improvements to the value stream as a whole rather than local ones for an individual process. It is common for disputes to occur, especially when a project team recognizes that there can Read more…
The central limit theorem, in layman’s terms, says that regardless of the shape of the distribution of a population, in most cases, the mean of random samples taken from that population will approximate a normal distribution. The larger the sample, or the larger the number of samples, the closer the Read more…