Andon: Lean Glossary

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Andon: What Is It?

Andon is the Japanese term for “lamp”.  In Lean terms an Andon becomes a visual management tool that shows the status of operations at a single glance, and highlights when things are not working as they should.

The typical Andon can show things like production status, machine downtime and faults or delays in a process step.  It is often shown on a board with the process stations numbered, and lit either green (normal operations) or red (defect or delay).

An Andon cord or button refers to how a team-mate notifies everyone that the process is not working as it should – by pulling the chord or pushing the button the process can stop, the Andon can be changed to red, and passing on defective product to downstream processes can be avoided.

An Andon is a part of Autonomation (Jidoka) and Visual Management.

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The Eight Wastes: Lean Glossary

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The “Eight Wastes”: What Are They?

Waste, (known as “Muda” in Japanese) was traditionally a list of the seven most common form of wasteful steps, processes and blockages in an organisation.  They have evolved over the years to the “Eight Wastes” below.  They are a great standard to refer to during your Lean transformation and an easy way to showcase where problems might be occurring.

Most people will be able to identify with two or three of these in their business, and often you will be able to note five or more.

The Eight Wastes are best remembered as “DOWNTIME”, as you can see below:

  1. Defects:      Mistakes that require rectification (rework; or worse, scrap).
  2. Over Production:      Producing goods or services that do not meet the specific eeds of customers.
  3. Waiting:      Groups of people in downstream processes waiting for the completion of upstream work.
  4. Non-use of Talent:      Failure to fully utilize the time and talents of people.
  5. Transport:      Unnecessary transport of material and sub-assemblies.
  6. Inventory:      Production of inventory that no one wants.
  7. Motion:      Unnecessary movement by employees active in the production process.
  8. Excessive Processing:      Processing steps that are not needed.

It is good practice to call these out during your Kaizen meeting or event and note them on your Value Stream Map, and do a root cause analysis on why they are needed or why they are occurring.

Additional to the Wastes, and just as important, are “Muri” (OverBurden) or staff and “Mura” (Unevenness) in a process that forms peaks and troughs in a workload.

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5s: Lean Glossary

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5s: What Is It?

5s is a method of organising a workplace to reduce unnecessary clutter, unnecessary movement (the waste of motion), and ensure “a place for everything and everything in its place”.  It is called 5s after the five steps used to implement it in a workplace.

In western terms, 5s is:

  1. Sort:  Sort out and remove unnecessary items.
  2. Straighten: Organise the essential items so team-mates can find materials quickly.
  3. Shine: Clean the area and work tools
  4. Standardise: Put into place regular cleaning, and review of items necessary
  5. Sustain: Ongoing monitoring of the implementation for continuous improvement

These were derived from the original Japanese 5s of:

  1. Seiri:  Separate needed from unneeded items—tools, parts, materials, paperwork—and discard the unneeded.
  2. Seiton:  Neatly arrange what is left—a place for everything and everything in its place.
  3. Seiso:  Clean and wash.
  4. Seiketsu:  Cleanliness resulting from regular performance of the first three Ss.
  5. Shitsuke: Discipline, to perform the first four Ss.

An Example of 5s:

Macy the Mechanic works with cars and tools all day.  She places a red tag on all her tools, and removes the tag if she uses it.  At the end of the week she sorts out 10 things that she actually doesn’t need or use.   Macy then arranges her tools to be close at hand (so she doesn’t have to reach or walk to get them) and hangs them on a board.  Macy also places “footprints” or “shadows” where the tools live, so she and everyone else knows where to put them back when they are finished using them.

Lastly, Macy puts in place a regular schedule of cleaning and maintaining the tools at the end of the day – degreasing and keeping them oiled – and keeps the standard process for this next to the tools as well, showing the next scheduled time and person to complete it.

In the office, Mark the Mailroom guy arranges the boxes for his incoming and outgoing mail to different floors so that they are labelled clearly and can be reached easily when walking down the mailroom path.  He also creates green cards to hang on a hook above any box that has mail in it, so he can see at a glance which ones need to be actioned and which ones are free.

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5 Whys: Lean Glossary

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The “5 Whys”: What Are They?

The 5 Whys are a very simple method of getting to the root cause of a problem or an opportunity.

They are often used after narrowing down our problem by starting with a Fishbone diagram, which separates the problem into different areas like People, Information, Process and Systems.

The Five Whys method is based on continuously asking “Why” something occurs until the real problem is revealed.  For example, a job in your company might be taking longer to complete than it should to complete.

“Why?”  The job is held up in one department with large backlogs of work.

“Why?”  They have to wait for information from multiple sources.

“Why?”  No one knows what information is specifically required to complete the process.

“Why?”  The correct information has not been made visible or easily accessible.

We can validate our “Five Whys” by reversing them and replacing “Why”, with “Therefore”.  If it still makes sense, then there is a good chance we have a valid root cause.  Here is an example:

The correct information has not been made visible or easily accessible.

“Therefore”, no one knows what information is specifically required to complete the process.

“Therefore”,  they have to wait for information from multiple sources.

“Therefore”, the job is held up in one department with large backlogs of work.

“Therefore”, a job in your company might be taking longer to complete than it should to complete.

When we have our possible root cause to the problem, we can delve deeper by gathering any required data, timings, rework and making is visible with a Value Stream Map, and then see where to start using the 80/20 rule and a Pareto Chart.

When implementing the 5 Whys, we don’t necessarily have to ask Why five times, five was simply noted to be the most common amount of times asked before the true root cause was revealed.

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Lean Glossary of Terms

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Below is a list of Lean terms and links to their explanations.  Click on any item to learn more about it.

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