The ISO 14000 family of standards by the International Organization for Standardization (ISO) relate to environmental management that exists to help organizations (a) minimize how their operations negatively affect the environment ; (b) comply with applicable laws, regulations, and other environmentally oriented requirements; and (c) continually improve in the above.
Lean manufacturing is a method of manufacturing goods aimed primarily at reducing times within the production system as well as response times from suppliers and customers. It is closely related to another concept called just-in-time manufacturing. Just-in-time manufacturing tries to match production to demand by only supplying goods that have been ordered and focus on efficiency, productivity, and reduction of "wastes" for the producer and supplier of goods. Lean manufacturing adopts the just-in-time approach and additionally focuses on reducing cycle, flow, and throughput times by further eliminating activities that do not add any value for the customer. Lean manufacturing also involves people who work outside of the manufacturing process, such as in marketing and customer service.
Six Sigma (6σ) is a set of techniques and tools for process improvement. It was introduced by American engineer Bill Smith while working at Motorola in 1986.
Kaizen is a concept referring to business activities that continuously improve all functions and involve all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers. Kaizen also applies to processes, such as purchasing and logistics, that cross organizational boundaries into the supply chain. It has been applied in healthcare, psychotherapy, life coaching, government, manufacturing, and banking.
The Toyota Production System (TPS) is an integrated socio-technical system, developed by Toyota, that comprises its management philosophy and practices. The TPS is a management system that organizes manufacturing and logistics for the automobile manufacturer, including interaction with suppliers and customers. The system is a major precursor of the more generic "lean manufacturing". Taiichi Ohno and Eiji Toyoda, Japanese industrial engineers, developed the system between 1948 and 1975.
A business process, business method, or business function is a collection of related, structured activities or tasks performed by people or equipment in which a specific sequence produces a service or product for a particular customer or customers. Business processes occur at all organizational levels and may or may not be visible to the customers. A business process may often be visualized (modeled) as a flowchart of a sequence of activities with interleaving decision points or as a process matrix of a sequence of activities with relevance rules based on data in the process. The benefits of using business processes include improved customer satisfaction and improved agility for reacting to rapid market change. Process-oriented organizations break down the barriers of structural departments and try to avoid functional silos.
Kaoru Ishikawa was a Japanese organizational theorist and a professor in the engineering faculty at the University of Tokyo who was noted for his quality management innovations. He is considered a key figure in the development of quality initiatives in Japan, particularly the quality circle. He is best known outside Japan for the Ishikawa or cause and effect diagram, often used in the analysis of industrial processes.
PDCA or plan–do–check–act is an iterative design and management method used in business for the control and continual improvement of processes and products. It is also known as the Shewhart cycle, or the control circle/cycle. Another version of this PDCA cycle is OPDCA. The added "O" stands for observation or as some versions say: "Observe the current condition." This emphasis on observation and current condition has currency with the literature on lean manufacturing and the Toyota Production System. The PDCA cycle, with Ishikawa's changes, can be traced back to S. Mizuno of the Tokyo Institute of Technology in 1959.
Business process re-engineering (BPR) is a business management strategy originally pioneered in the early 1990s, focusing on the analysis and design of workflows and business processes within an organization. BPR aims to help organizations fundamentally rethink how they do their work in order to improve customer service, cut operational costs, and become world-class competitors.
Operational excellence is a mindset that embraces certain principles and tools to create a culture of excellence within an organization. Operational excellence means every employee can see, deliver, and improve the flow of value to a customer.
The Toyota Way is a set of principles defining the organizational culture of Toyota Motor Corporation. The company formalized the Toyota Way in 2001, after decades of academic research into the Toyota Production System and its implications for lean manufacturing as a methodology that other organizations could adopt. The two pillars of the Toyota Way are respect for people and continuous improvement. Jeffrey K. Liker popularized the philosophy in his 2004 book, The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles from the World's Greatest Manufacturer. Subsequent research has explored the extent to which the Toyota Way can be applied in other contexts.
Norman Bodek was a teacher, consultant, author and publisher who published over 100 Japanese management books in English, including the works of Taiichi Ohno and Dr. Shigeo Shingo. He taught a course on "The Best of Japanese Management Practices" at Portland State University. Bodek created the Shingo Prize with Dr. Vern Beuhler at Utah State University. He was elected to Industry Week's Manufacturing Hall of Fame and founded Productivity Press. He was also the President of PCS Press. He died on December 9, 2020, at the age of 88.
Lean IT is the extension of lean manufacturing and lean services principles to the development and management of information technology (IT) products and services. Its central concern, applied in the context of IT, is the elimination of waste, where waste is work that adds no value to a product or service.
Business process management (BPM) is the discipline in which people use various methods to discover, model, analyze, measure, improve, optimize, and automate business processes. Any combination of methods used to manage a company's business processes is BPM. Processes can be structured and repeatable or unstructured and variable. Though not required, enabling technologies are often used with BPM.
SREDIM is a method of task analysis. It is an acronym derived from the words select, record, examine, develop, install/implement and maintain. This problem solving method's analysis system can be used to analyze any process to determine parts of the process which are inefficient, or can be improved.
Radiometer is a Danish multinational company which develops, manufactures and markets solutions for blood sampling, blood gas analysis, transcutaneous monitoring, immunoassay testing and the related IT management systems. The company was founded in 1935 in Copenhagen, Denmark by Børge Aagaard Nielsen and Carl Schrøder. It has over 3,200 employees and direct representation in more than 32 countries. Corporate headquarters remain in Copenhagen.
Akira Kōdate (高達秋良、こうだて・あきら) was born in Kanagawa District, Japan on 6 October 1925. He is an engineer and a Japanese business manager, considered one of the greatest international experts in R&D and production management, as well as a master of lean thinking-related methodologies. Since 1953, he has been working as a consultant with the Japan Management Association (JMA) and JMA Consultants Inc, where he works as a principal consultant and technical advisor.
Setsuban Kanri (節番管理) is the name of a production management methodology for make-to-order business companies. More specifically, it indicates a "management system by synchronized process blocks" which had been originally set and implemented as a management model for the control of the manufacturing progress with makers whose products were very much tailored upon the requests of their customers. It is specific to organizations where the production model is one of the following: DTO ("Design-to-order"), ETO ("Engineer-to-order"), ATO ("Assembly-to-order") or MTO ("Make-to-order").
Obeya originated from a long history of learning & improving. The earliest notion of which is believed to be the Analects of Confucius nearly 2500 years ago. The roots of what is now a valuable management practice can be found across continents with many disciplines influencing each other throughout history. One of the more recognizable modern examples involving Obeya was at Toyota during the G21 Project, while building the Prius. Chief Engineer of the G21 project, Takeshi Uchiyamada “felt that he lacked the necessary authority to make the optimal decisions and thought he could be overrun by experienced discipline leaders in a way that was not optimal for the project as such”. This need for support from the other leaders that Uchiyamada identified, is what manifested for him the first use of Obeya "large room" in this environment. The Obeya, was instituted "as an arena for all his discussions with the discipline leaders. In this room, the other discipline leaders would be present, and documents and data would be available to all."
Hoshin Kanri is a 7-step process used in strategic planning in which strategic goals are communicated throughout the company and then put into action. The Hoshin Kanri strategic planning system originated from post-war Japan, but has since spread to the U.S. and around the world. Translated from Japanese, Hoshin Kanri aptly means "compass management". The individual words "hoshin" and "kanri" mean direction and administration, respectively.
