Manufacturing glossary of terms

Teamwork is the collaborative effort of a group to achieve a common goal or to complete a task in the most effective and efficient way.

The Cultural Web was developed by Gerry Johnson and Kevan Scholes in 1992 and provides an approach for understanding and changing your organisation’s culture. The model contains six interrelated elements and is illustrated as overlapping spheres:

Stories: past and present events that people talk about inside and outside the company.

Rituals and routines: daily behaviours and actions of people that signal what acceptable behaviour is.

Symbols: visual representations of the company, including visual factory, posters, logos, office decor and formal or informal dress codes.

Organisational structure: includes structures defined by the organisation chart, and the unwritten lines of power and influence that indicate whose contributions are most valued.

Control systems: the way the organisation is controlled, including financial systems, quality systems and rewards.

Power structures: power may lie with one or two executives, a group of executives, or a department - these people have the greatest amount of influence on decisions, operations and strategic direction.

(See Behaviours - Culture - Quinn’s Cultural Types)

The Golden Thread is a simple framework for aligning performance metrics with organisational objectives, and therefore individual goals, throughout each layer of the business. 

(See Strategy Deployment)

The Toyota (or any organisation name) Way is a holistic business or enterprise-wide strategy where every individual is engaged and totally aligned in achieving the business goals and vision. 

(See Vision)

The Theory of Constraints was developed by Dr Aliya Goldratt and is a methodology that focuses on profit improvement by focusing on constraints:

1. Identify the system constraint.

2. Decide how to exploit the constraint.

3. Subordinate everything else.

4. Elevate the constraint.

5. Return to step 1, but beware of ‘inertia’.

(See Bottlenecks - Constraints)

Kenneth Thomas gained his PhD in Administrative Sciences at Purdue University whilst holding a junior teaching position at the University of California, Los Angeles. It was at UCLA that Thomas met Ralph Kilmann, who joined the doctoral programme. 

In 1974, Thomas and Kilmann introduced and published their model of conflict, describing conflict as the condition in which people’s concerns are incompatible or incomparable. If the things that two people care about are opposed, then there is conflict. 

The model identifies two dimensions when choosing a course of action in a conflict situation: assertiveness and co-operativeness. Assertiveness is the degree to which you try to satisfy your own needs. Co-operativeness is the degree to which you try to satisfy the other person’s concerns. 

These two underlying dimensions of human behaviour can be used to define five different modes for responding to conflict situations:

1. Avoiding: sidestepping the conflict.

2. Accommodating: trying to satisfy the other person’s concerns at expense of your own

3. Compromising: trying to find an acceptable settlement that only partially satisfies both people’s concerns.

4. Competing: trying to satisfy your concerns at the expense of others.

5. Collaborating: trying to find a win-win solution that completely satisfies both people’s concerns. 

This model may appear similar to the managerial, or leadership, grid.

(See Conflict)

Tools are a single device or element that is designed to accomplish a specific task.

Total Productive Maintenance is centred on people ownership and engagement and has eight pillars that are aimed at proactively establishing reliability of machines and processes:

1. Autonomous maintenance.

2. Planned maintenance.

3. Quality maintenance.

4. Kobetsu Kaizen - focused improvement.

5. Early equipment maintenance.

6. Education and training.

7. Health, safety and environment.

8. TPM in the office.

TPM is a continuous improvement system designed to improve organisational efficiency and effectiveness through involving and engaging all employees. 

Benefits include:

1. Improved customer satisfaction.

2. Greater job satisfaction through ownership and engagement.

3. Reduced costs.

4. Improved performance.

5. Reduced breakdowns.

6. Reduced waste.

7. Reduced safety losses.

The goals of TPM are:

1. Zero downtime.

2. Zero waste.

3. Zero accidents.

(See TPM Eight Pillars - TPS)

The Toyota Production System (TPS) is a management system that organises manufacturing and logistics for the automobile manufacturer, including interaction with suppliers and customers. 

(See TPS House - Taiichi Ohno - Shegio Shingo - TPM)

Training Information Guides are work instructions, training guides or standard operating procedures for routine and non-routine activities. 

(See Setting Standards)

Training Within Industry (TWI) was established in 1940 by the National Defence Advisory Committee (USA) and is a work training methodology that focuses standardising work tasks by a learn-by doing approach to produce safely, quickly, correctly and conscientiously.

(See Standard Work)

Bruce Tuckman (1938–2016) was an American psychological researcher who carried out his research into the theory of group dynamics. In 1965, he published a theory known as Tuckman’s Stages of Group Development. 

Tuckman’s theory argues that there are four phases of group development: forming, storming, norming, performing. He added a fifth stage in 1977, adjourning:

1. Forming: team acquaints and establishes ground rules .

2. Storming: members start to communicate but still act as individuals. Norming: members feel part of the team and accept others’ points of view.

3. Performing: team works in an open and trusting atmosphere.

4. Adjourning: team conducts assessments and recognises contributions.

Value Stream Mapping (VSM) is a Lean method that is used to identify all the actions (both value added and non-value added) currently required (material and information) to bring a product from raw material or to deliver a service to the customer. In Toyota, it is known as ‘product and information flow mapping’.

There are three types of work:

1. Value added - what the customer pays for.

2. What needs to be carried out - not paid for by customer.

3. Waste - our goal is to eliminate or reduce all waste and make effective and efficient use of all other work. 

(See 7 Wastes - TIMWOOD - Hidden Factory - Non-Value Adding Activities)

Values can be described as our beliefs and opinions. They are subjective and may change over time.

Vision is the future state of the company, where the company wants us to be. The Manufacturers Network Vision is: 

“To have a recognised, vibrant network of manufacturing professionals who are achieving results from our services.” 

(See Strategy Deployment)

Visual Controls are used as part of mistake proofing (Poka-Yoke), visually making things easy to do right and difficult to do wrong. It includes proper signage and labelling, marking gauges and levels to what should be correct. 

The three rules for visual controls are:

1. Make it clear.

2. Make it easy to do right .

3. Make it difficult to do wrong.

(See Poka-Yoke)

Visual Factory is the process of making the company more effective by making the current state of performance and the workplace obvious at a glance and utilising visual controls and visual standards. 

At the Manufacturers Network, we have adopted these 5 rules:

1. Colour code areas and aisles.

2. Make it known what you do.

3. Make it known how you do it.

4. Heighten the standards you do it to.

5. Always be tour ready.

(See Visual Controls - Visual Standards - Andon - One Point Lessons)

Visual Standards are used to show what our standards and expectations are and provide a standard to audit against. 

(See Audit - Visual Factory - Visual Controls - Andon - One Point Lessons)