Defects

Defects are the undesirable results of an error in a process. In most cases, this shows up as a product or service not conforming to a specification. Defects are often expressed as either yield of good parts, such as a 95% yield (meaning a 5% defect rate), or as Defects Read more…

Critical Few

Criticism is negative feedback about something. At work, criticism can be about personal performance or a process. In a Lean culture, discussing problems is an essential part of making improvements. The key to success at addressing these issues is to make every attempt to separate the failure of a person Read more…

Aha! Moments

“Aha!” moments are the instances when the ‘light bulb’ comes on. It is the point in time when someone makes the transition from not knowing something to full understanding. Fortunately, “Aha!” moments are often visible on the faces of people experiencing them. Many instructors, especially those mentoring Lean students, live Read more…

Random

Random means occurring by chance. There are formal mathematical definitions regarding probability distributions, but the basic definition is how the typical non-mathematician looks at randomness. But even with that simple definition, we often think of things as being random when they really are not. In truth, even something as simple Read more…

Night Shift

A night shift is just what it sounds like. It is the second (or third) shift at a facility after the normal day shift ends. A night shift usually exists for one of two reasons. In production environments, a night shift adds capacity without needing to buy extra equipment. This Read more…

Milestones

Milestones were originally the stone markers along a route that told travelers the mileage. In modern times, milestones serve the same function for projects. Milestones are specific, definable points on a project that are used to indicate progress. If milestones are vague, they are hard to tell when they are Read more…

Indicators

Monitoring indicators give companies a sense of what is going on, or what is going to happen. An indicator is a signal that can be used to understand or predict a behavior of a person or system. A poker player has “tells”. By identifying and monitoring those indicators, his opponents Read more…

Engineers

Engineers, not surprisingly, are people who are specially training in an engineering field. In a nutshell, they design solutions to a problem. Types of Engineers Design engineers solve problems by creating a product. Software engineers solve problems with code. Manufacturing engineers create processes to solve problems. Engineers are key players Read more…

Constraints

Eliyahu Goldratt put together his “Theory of Constraints” and presented its principles in his book The Goal. He explained that systems generally have a single (sometimes more) bottleneck that limits, or constrains, production. In a more general sense, a constraint is anything that prevents you from accomplishing something that you Read more…