Search results
Results from the WOW.Com Content Network
[2] The tool has seen use beyond Toyota, and is now used within Kaizen, lean manufacturing, lean construction and Six Sigma. The five whys were initially developed to understand why new product features or manufacturing techniques were needed, and was not developed for root cause analysis. In other companies, it appears in other forms.
The Toyota Way is a set of principles defining the organizational culture of Toyota Motor Corporation. [ 1 ] [ 2 ] 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. [ 3 ]
Lean enterprise is a practice focused on value creation for the end customer with minimal waste and processes. [4] The term has historically been associated with lean manufacturing and Six Sigma (or Lean Six Sigma) due to lean principles being popularized by Toyota in the automobile manufacturing industry and subsequently the electronics and internet software industries.
Each Six Sigma project follows a defined methodology and has specific value targets, such as reducing pollution or increasing customer satisfaction. The term Six Sigma originates from statistical quality control, a reference to the fraction of a normal curve that lies within six standard deviations of the mean, used to represent a defect rate.
When Toyota started manufacturing cars, there was a difference in manufacturing conditions between Japan and the USA. Toyota had few educated engineers and little prior experience. Car companies in the US employed a well-educated workforce in the cities and benefited from the research and student skill sets of established engineering schools.
Lean Six Sigma is a synergized managerial concept of Lean and Six Sigma. [6] Lean traditionally focuses on eliminating the eight kinds of waste (" muda ") , and Six Sigma focuses on improving process output quality by identifying and removing the causes of defects (errors) and minimizing variability in (manufacturing and business) processes.
TQM, SPC, six-sigma, have all found their way into lean construction. Similarly, tools and methods found in other areas, such as in social science and business, are used where they are applicable. The tools and methods in construction management, such as CPM and work breakdown structure, etc., are also utilized in lean construction implementations.
Historically, although the first successful Design for Six Sigma projects in 1989 and 1991 predate establishment of the DMAIC process improvement process, Design for Six Sigma (DFSS) is accepted in part because Six Sigma organisations found that they could not optimise products past three or four Sigma without fundamentally redesigning the ...