“Net work” Not a popular word. It appears in Taiichi Ohno’s book “Toyota Production System.” This word appears in the figure in the...

One commonly misunderstood phrase in TPS is the “Multi-skill worker.” Some understand that as “almighty.” “Almighty” and “Multi-skilled”...

When we look at the flow, where do you see? One of the most essential places to see is the flow's division and confluence points. Water...

Three days. 72 hours. 4320 minutes. 259,200 seconds. This time in East Asia (or mainly in Japan) has some special meaning. Here are some...

Activity to see has caught our attention in many ways. This is why many languages have many words to describe “see.” See, look, watch,...

Zen 【禅】 and Kaizen 【改善】. English alphabets are similar but two different topics. Yet, there is a concept that connects the two. The...

Once in a while, I ran into people who quote Taiichi Ohno saying the following: “In a production plant operation, data are highly...

Many elementary schools in Japan have a statue of Sontoku Ninomiya. Many, such as Sakichi Toyoda, believed in Ninomiya’s philosophy,...

“When you see data, think of it as uncertain (or dangerous).” Kaoru Ishikawa, father of Total Quality Control (TQC) A powerful quote by...

QC Process Table. It is often mentioned as part of Total Quality Management, but there is little mention of the link to the Standardized...

In the chapter where Taiichi Ohno talks about standardized work, he concludes that applying standardized work correctly will develop...

I often ran into the following conditions; “We have standards. But we don’t practice Kaizen.” 🤔 Are we saying that the standards are...

This post is about a brief history of 5S in Japanese factories. This will ignore some philosophical aspects or activities outside...

You spend so much energy & time on your 5S. But you don’t see a result. I have posted in the past that “Seiri【整理】” is about; 1️⃣ Organize...

“Just In Time” production stops every time a natural disaster hits. Then, there is this argument to keep more inventory comes up. Here is...

Since my last post was about Zen【善】 inside Kaizen, this post is about Kai【改】. As I looked deeper into this symbol, it reminded me of my...

Kaizen【改善】 = Continuous Improvement We have used this translation for decades. I have used it. Many others have used it. Once in a while,...

Kanban means signboard for typical Japanese. But originally, it wasn’t called Kanban. It was called something else. And the original...

It is said that Kanban started by getting a hint from the supermarket. When we go to a supermarket, customers pick what they want. They...

The history of “Total Productive Maintenance (TPM)” starts from what is currently Denso, a Toyota group company. When we look at their...