Lean Manufacturing Tools

A method of addressing problems on assembly lines by stopping the line at the end of the work cycle—that is, at a fixed position—if a pro...

Five Whys dicipline The practice of asking why repeatedly whenever a problem is encountered in order to get beyond the obvious symptoms ...

Five related terms, beginning with an S sound, describing workplace practices conducive to visual control and lean production. The five t...

The principle and practice of maintaining precise production and conveyance sequence by ensuring that the first part to enter a process or...

A pull production system in which preceding (supplier) processes  produce only enough to replace—or fill up—product withdrawn by  follow...

The frequency with which different part numbers are produced in a production process or system. If a machine is changed over in a sequen...

Error-Proofing : Methods that help operators avoid mistakes in their work caused  by choosing the wrong part, leaving out a part, inst...

A philosophy for designing and buying production machinery so that small amounts of capacity can be added or subtracted as demand changes...

A situation in which production lead time and order lead time are less than the time the customer is prepared to wait for the product, an...

A mass production approach to operations in which large lots (batches) of items are processed and moved  to the next process regardless o...

The location of processing steps for a product immediately adjacent to each other so that parts, documents, etc., can be processed in ver...

Producing and moving one item at a time (or a small and consistent batch of items) through a series of processing steps as continuously a...

A facility that sorts and recombines a variety of inbound items from many suppliers for outbound shipment to many customers, such as asse...

A method of conducting one-piece flow in a cell where machines unload parts automatically so that the operator (or operators) can carry a...