Concepts of Lean Management

Lean Management is a business philosophy that was first developed by Taiichi Ohno in the 1990s with par­ticular focus on manufacturing firms. It is applied in various organizations to improve their business and reduce waste. It is a concept applied to remove muda. There are seven types of waste—overproduction, wasting time, resources, transportation, processing,

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What is the 5 S?

The 5 S forms the foundation of Kaizen. A 5-S programme is usually a part of and the key component in establishing a visual workplace. It is both a part of Kaizen and a component of lean manufacturing. The 5-S programme focuses on implementing visual order, organization, cleanli­ness and standardization. The results that can

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Kaizen versus Innovation

Innovation is seen as a major change in the wake of technological breakthroughs. Innovation is dramatic and a real attention-getter. Kaizen, on the other hand, is often undramatic and subtle, and its results are seldom immediately visible. While Kaizen is a continuous process that implies continuous improvement and involves every employee in every company

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Company-wide Quality Control (CWQC)

The avenues through which Kaizen may be pursued are almost endless. However, the “high road” to Kaizen has been the practice of company-wide quality control (CWQC). Hardware, software and human-ware are the three building blocks of business. CWQC starts with human-ware. The hardware and software aspects of business are considered only after the human-ware

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Kaizen—The Practice

A well planned Kaizen programme can be broken down into three segments—management- oriented Kaizen, group-oriented Kaizen and individual-oriented Kaizen—depending on the complexity and the level of Kaizen. Table 9.4 elaborates and explains this aspect. 1. Management-oriented Kaizen Management-oriented Kaizen is considered the first pillar of Kaizen. It is a crucial pillar, since it concentrates

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Quality Function Deployment (QFD)

Dr Mizuno, Professor Emeritus of the Tokyo Institute of Technology, is credited with initiating the quality function deployment (QFD) system. QFD can be applied practically to all industries in the manufacturing and service sector. QFD is a planning tool used to fulfill customer expectations.5 It focuses on customer requirements, often referred to as the

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Quality Control Circles (QCC)

The concept of quality circles or quality control circles originated in Japan. In April 1962, Dr K. Ishikawa presented this idea in the inaugural issue of JUSE’s journal Gemba to QC. In the last 36 years, this concept has been introduced in as many as 130 countries. How­ever, the quality circle concept is well

The Suggestion Quality System

Employee suggestion systems are designed to encourage active cooperation of employees in the activities of business and industry through seeking ideas for cost reduction or cost prevention or increasing productivity or efficiency from the rank and file. The suggestion systems facilitate upward flow of communication—a type of communication that is very much needed in

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Poka-yoke

In the early 1960s, quality guru Shigeo Shingo combined the concepts of “successive,” “inde­pendent” and “source” inspections with Toyota’s in-house “fool proofing” techniques and devised the famous production philosophy “poka-yoke” (poka means mistake or inadver­tent errors, while yoke means proofing. It is derived from the word “yokeru” meaning, to avoid). The initial term was

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Quality of Work Life

Quality of work life (QWL) can be defined as “The quality of relationship between employees and the total working environment.” QWL is a process by which an organization responds to employee needs by developing mechanisms to allow them to share fully in making the decisions that design their lives at work. The QWL approach

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Breakthrough Improvements at Apple Inc.

Apple Inc. is based in Cupertino, California. The company designs, manufactures, and mar­kets mobile communication and media devices, personal computers, and portable digital music players. Apple also sells a variety of related software, services, peripherals, network­ing solutions, and third-party digital content and applications. The company has always been a different company with a different

Invention and Innovation for quality improvement

Creativity is the ability to think and act in ways that are new and novel. There are two kinds of creativity—innovation and invention. Innovation refers to thinking creatively about some­thing that already exists (for example, the tape recorder, walkman and CD player are all inno­vations on the phonograph). Invention is creating something that did

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Creativity for quality improvement

The most basic definition of creativity is to bring something into being. Creativity is defined as the synthesis of existing ideas in a unique way that is appropriate to the context, issue or problem. Creativity is a prerequisite for innovation. Creativity is part of continuous improvement. The terms creativity and innovation are often used

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Brainstorming for quality improvement

Brainstorming is a method for developing creative solutions to problems. It works by focus­ing on a problem, and then deliberately coming up with as many unusual solutions as pos­sible by pushing the ideas as far as possible. Most problems are not solved automatically by the first idea that comes to mind. It is important

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Innovation for quality improvement

The meaning of “innovation” is revealed by its Latin root, nova, or new. It is generally under­stood as the introduction of a new thing or method. Innovation is the embodiment, com­bination or synthesis of knowledge in original, relevant, valued new products, processes or services. A convenient definition of innovation from an organizational perspective is

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The Theory of Inventive Problem Solving (Teorija Rezbenija Izobretatelashib Zadach, TRIZ)

Design and development approaches such as the quality function deployment show us what to solve, but not always how to solve the technology bottlenecks that arise. Most techniques rely on the experience of designers that may be limited to certain areas of expertise. Thus, a solution that might be simpler and cheaper using another

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Value Analysis/ Value Engineering for quality improvement

Value is a personal perspective of one’s willingness to pay for the performance delivered by a product, process or project. Good value is achieved when the required performance can be accurately defined and delivered at the lowest lifecycle cost. 1. What Is Value Engineering? It is an undisputed fact that the gap between the

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Benchmarking: What Is It?

Benchmarking can be defined as a process for improving performance by constantly identi­fying, understanding and adapting best practices and processes followed inside and outside the company and implementing the results. The main emphasis of benchmarking is not on “best performance” but on improving a given business operation or a process by exploiting “best practices.”

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An Overview of Benchmarking

Benchmarking is the process of gathering, analysing and evaluating the world outside your organization and comparing it to your own. The result of this process becomes the cornerstone of the organization’s improvement. It is dependent on the organization’s determination to discover and continuously monitor industry leaders and the best prac­tices they employ in business.

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The Evolution of Benchmarking

Benchmarking has been around for a long time. In the 1800s, Francis Lowell, a New England colonist studied British textile mills and imported many ideas along with improvements he made for the burgeoning American textile mills. Formally, benchmarking may have evolved in the 1950s when W. Edwards Deming taught the Japanese the idea of

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