5.3 Lean Production and Quality Management

• Lean production is the process of streamlining operations to reduce all forms of waste and increase efficiency.
• Muda is a Japanese term for waste.
• OTHER is a useful acronym for remembering types of wastage: Over-processing, Time, Human Effort, Energy, Resources and Materials
• Principles of lean production: waste minimisation, 'right first time' approach, flexibility, continuous improvement, supply chain management
• Kaizen is another term for continuous improvement.
• Kaizen is the Japanese philosophy of making small and incremental improvements to increase efficiency and productivity.
• Just in time stock control is a Japanese stock management method where stock is delivered as soon as it is needed meaning minimum levels of stock have to be held in storage.
• Cradle to cradle (C2C) is a system of design where products are designed to be recyclable or able to be repocessed.
• Cradle to grave (C2G) refers to single use products.
• Quality control is reactive.
• Quality assurance is proactive.
• A quality circle are small groups of people who meet regularly to discuss quality issues and work to resolve them.
• Kaizen groups perform quality control but unlike quality circles aren't involved in directly fixing the problem.
• Benchmarking is when an organisation compares its processes, products, operations etc. to another firm in the same industry.
• Historical benchmarking is comparing performance over time.
• Inter-firm benchmarking is comparing the performance data of different businesses.
• Total quality management (TQM) is a management philosophy where everyone in the organisation must commit to quality standards.
• Quality standards are national and international quality awards used to show certain quality benchmarks have been met often used in marketing by the business selling the product.