130-470: Kanban ( Japanese : 看板 [kambaɴ] meaning signboard ) is a scheduling system for lean manufacturing (also called just-in-time manufacturing, abbreviated JIT). Taiichi Ohno , an industrial engineer at Toyota , developed kanban to improve manufacturing efficiency. The system takes its name from the cards that track production within a factory. Kanban is also known as the Toyota nameplate system in
260-624: A benefit from the in-group to the out-group) means "[I/we] explained [it] to [him/her/them]". Such beneficiary auxiliary verbs thus serve a function comparable to that of pronouns and prepositions in Indo-European languages to indicate the actor and the recipient of an action. Japanese "pronouns" also function differently from most modern Indo-European pronouns (and more like nouns) in that they can take modifiers as any other noun may. For instance, one does not say in English: The amazed he ran down
390-447: A case-study book on just-in-time in the U.S. was able to devote a full chapter to ZIPS at Omark, along with two chapters on just-in-time at several Hewlett-Packard plants, and single chapters for Harley-Davidson , John Deere, IBM-Raleigh, North Carolina, and California-based Apple Inc. , a Toyota truck-bed plant, and New United Motor Manufacturing joint venture between Toyota and General Motors . Two similar, contemporaneous books from
520-469: A commitment to continuous improvement ), 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. Lean manufacturing
650-414: A distinct language of its own that has absorbed various aspects from neighboring languages. Japanese has five vowels, and vowel length is phonemic, with each having both a short and a long version. Elongated vowels are usually denoted with a line over the vowel (a macron ) in rōmaji , a repeated vowel character in hiragana , or a chōonpu succeeding the vowel in katakana . /u/ ( listen )
780-419: A glide /j/ and either the first part of a geminate consonant ( っ / ッ , represented as Q) or a moraic nasal in the coda ( ん / ン , represented as N). The nasal is sensitive to its phonetic environment and assimilates to the following phoneme, with pronunciations including [ɴ, m, n, ɲ, ŋ, ɰ̃] . Onset-glide clusters only occur at the start of syllables but clusters across syllables are allowed as long as
910-480: A kanban system, adjacent upstream and downstream workstations communicate with each other through their cards, where each container has a kanban associated with it. Economic order quantity is important. The two most important types of kanbans are: The Kanban philosophy and task boards are also used in agile project management to coordinate tasks in project teams. An online demonstration can be seen in an agile simulator. Implementation of kanban can be described in
1040-479: A listener depending on the listener's relative social position and the degree of familiarity between the speaker and the listener. When used in different social relationships, the same word may have positive (intimate or respectful) or negative (distant or disrespectful) connotations. Japanese often use titles of the person referred to where pronouns would be used in English. For example, when speaking to one's teacher, it
1170-503: A manufacturer-to-retailer model developed in the U.S. in the 1980s, referred to as quick response , has morphed over time to what is called fast fashion . The strategic elements of lean can be quite complex, and comprise multiple elements. Four different notions of lean have been identified: The other way to avoid market risk and control the supply efficiently is to cut down in stock. P&G has completed their goal to co-operate with Walmart and other wholesales companies by building
1300-748: A natural consequence, a system-wide perspective rather focusing directly upon the wasteful practices themselves. Takt time is the rate at which products need to be produced to meet customer demand. The JIT system is designed to produce products at the rate of takt time, which ensures that products are produced just in time to meet customer demand. Sepheri provides a list of methodologies of just-in-time manufacturing that "are important but not exhaustive": Womack and Jones define Lean as "...a way to do more and more with less and less—less human effort, less equipment, less time, and less space—while coming closer and closer to providing customers exactly what they want" and then translate this into five key principles: Lean
1430-411: A perceived clash between the new just-in-time regime and manufacturing resource planning (MRP II), a computer software-based system of manufacturing planning and control which had become prominent in industry in the 1960s and 1970s. Debates in professional meetings on just-in-time vs. MRP II were followed by published articles, one of them titled, "The Rise and Fall of Just-in-Time". Less confrontational
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#17328581467721560-497: A prevalent practice in public healthcare, commonly known as lean healthcare. Due to the intensively competitive environment, lean approach becomes a growing alternative in the healthcare sector to achieve optimized resource management and performance improvement. According to Williams, it becomes necessary to find suppliers that are close by or can supply materials quickly with limited advance notice. When ordering small quantities of materials, suppliers' minimum order policies may pose
1690-459: A problem, though. Employees are at risk of precarious work when employed by factories that utilize just-in-time and flexible production techniques. A longitudinal study of US workers since 1970 indicates employers seeking to easily adjust their workforce in response to supply and demand conditions respond by creating more nonstandard work arrangements, such as contracting and temporary work. Natural and human-made disasters will disrupt
1820-408: A sentence need not be stated and pronouns may be omitted if they can be inferred from context. In the example above, hana ga nagai would mean "[their] noses are long", while nagai by itself would mean "[they] are long." A single verb can be a complete sentence: Yatta! ( やった! ) "[I / we / they / etc] did [it]!". In addition, since adjectives can form the predicate in a Japanese sentence (below),
1950-484: A series of small improvements incrementally along the supply chain can bring forth enhanced productivity. Alternative terms for JIT manufacturing have been used. Motorola 's choice was short-cycle manufacturing (SCM). IBM 's was continuous-flow manufacturing (CFM), and demand-flow manufacturing (DFM), a term handed down from consultant John Constanza at his Institute of Technology in Colorado. Still another alternative
2080-416: A simple kanban system implementation is a "three-bin system" for the supplied parts, where there is no in-house manufacturing. One bin is on the factory floor (the initial demand point), one bin is in the factory store (the inventory control point), and one bin is at the supplier. The bins usually have a removable card containing the product details and other relevant information, the classic kanban card. When
2210-428: A single adjective can be a complete sentence: Urayamashii! ( 羨ましい! ) "[I'm] jealous [about it]!". While the language has some words that are typically translated as pronouns, these are not used as frequently as pronouns in some Indo-European languages, and function differently. In some cases, Japanese relies on special verb forms and auxiliary verbs to indicate the direction of benefit of an action: "down" to indicate
2340-495: A weekend in 1998, eliminated buffer inventories, reducing inventory from 47 days to 5 days, flow time from 15 days to 2 days, with 60% of purchased parts arriving JIT and 77% going dock to line, and suppliers reduced from 480 to 165. Hewlett-Packard, one of western industry's earliest JIT implementers, provides a set of four case studies from four H-P divisions during the mid-1980s. The four divisions, Greeley, Fort Collins, Computer Systems, and Vancouver, employed some but not all of
2470-675: Is compressed rather than protruded , or simply unrounded. Some Japanese consonants have several allophones , which may give the impression of a larger inventory of sounds. However, some of these allophones have since become phonemic. For example, in the Japanese language up to and including the first half of the 20th century, the phonemic sequence /ti/ was palatalized and realized phonetically as [tɕi] , approximately chi ( listen ) ; however, now [ti] and [tɕi] are distinct, as evidenced by words like tī [tiː] "Western-style tea" and chii [tɕii] "social status". The "r" of
2600-421: Is topic–comment . Sentence-final particles are used to add emotional or emphatic impact, or form questions. Nouns have no grammatical number or gender , and there are no articles . Verbs are conjugated , primarily for tense and voice , but not person . Japanese adjectives are also conjugated. Japanese has a complex system of honorifics , with verb forms and vocabulary to indicate the relative status of
2730-428: 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 (JIT manufacturing in short). Just-in-time manufacturing tries to match production to demand by only supplying goods that have been ordered and focus on efficiency, productivity (with
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#17328581467722860-445: Is also seen in o-medetō "congratulations", from medetaku ). Late Middle Japanese has the first loanwords from European languages – now-common words borrowed into Japanese in this period include pan ("bread") and tabako ("tobacco", now "cigarette"), both from Portuguese . Modern Japanese is considered to begin with the Edo period (which spanned from 1603 to 1867). Since Old Japanese,
2990-519: Is also used in a limited fashion (such as for imported acronyms) in Japanese writing. The numeral system uses mostly Arabic numerals , but also traditional Chinese numerals . Proto-Japonic , the common ancestor of the Japanese and Ryukyuan languages , is thought to have been brought to Japan by settlers coming from the Korean peninsula sometime in the early- to mid-4th century BC (the Yayoi period ), replacing
3120-580: Is an important special case, can be found in Tayur (1993), and more recently Liberopoulos and Dallery (2000), among other papers. The system originates from the simplest visual stock replenishment signaling system, an empty box. This was first developed in the UK factories producing Spitfires during the Second World War , and was known as the "two bin system". In the late 1940s, Toyota started studying supermarkets with
3250-440: Is appropriate to use sensei ( 先生 , "teacher"), but inappropriate to use anata . This is because anata is used to refer to people of equal or lower status, and one's teacher has higher status. Japanese nouns have no grammatical number, gender or article aspect. The noun hon ( 本 ) may refer to a single book or several books; hito ( 人 ) can mean "person" or "people", and ki ( 木 ) can be "tree" or "trees". Where number
3380-684: Is associated with comedy (see Kansai dialect ). Dialects of Tōhoku and North Kantō are associated with typical farmers. The Ryūkyūan languages, spoken in Okinawa and the Amami Islands (administratively part of Kagoshima ), are distinct enough to be considered a separate branch of the Japonic family; not only is each language unintelligible to Japanese speakers, but most are unintelligible to those who speak other Ryūkyūan languages. However, in contrast to linguists, many ordinary Japanese people tend to consider
3510-462: Is better documentation of Late Middle Japanese phonology than for previous forms (for instance, the Arte da Lingoa de Iapam ). Among other sound changes, the sequence /au/ merges to /ɔː/ , in contrast with /oː/ ; /p/ is reintroduced from Chinese; and /we/ merges with /je/ . Some forms rather more familiar to Modern Japanese speakers begin to appear – the continuative ending - te begins to reduce onto
3640-509: Is correlated with the sex of the speaker and the social situation in which they are spoken: men and women alike in a formal situation generally refer to themselves as watashi ( 私 , literally "private") or watakushi (also 私 , hyper-polite form), while men in rougher or intimate conversation are much more likely to use the word ore ( 俺 "oneself", "myself") or boku . Similarly, different words such as anata , kimi , and omae ( お前 , more formally 御前 "the one before me") may refer to
3770-483: Is depleted by the quantity assigned on kanban card, a "kanban trigger" is created (which may be manual or automatic), a purchase order is released with predefined quantity for the supplier defined on the card, and the supplier is expected to dispatch material within a specified lead-time. Kanban cards, in keeping with the principles of kanban, simply convey the need for more materials. A red card lying in an empty parts cart conveys that more parts are needed. An example of
3900-454: Is determined according to customer orders. In contexts where supply time is lengthy and demand is difficult to forecast, often the best one can do is to respond quickly to observed demand. This situation is exactly what a kanban system accomplishes, in that it is used as a demand signal that immediately travels through the supply chain. This ensures that intermediate stock held in the supply chain are better managed, and are usually smaller. Where
4030-523: Is founded on the concept of continuous and incremental improvements on product and process while eliminating redundant activities. "The value of adding activities are simply only those things the customer is willing to pay for, everything else is waste, and should be eliminated, simplified, reduced, or integrated". On principle 2, waste, see seven basic waste types under The Toyota Way . Additional waste types are: One paper suggests that an organization implementing Lean needs its own Lean plan as developed by
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4160-417: Is important, it can be indicated by providing a quantity (often with a counter word ) or (rarely) by adding a suffix, or sometimes by duplication (e.g. 人人 , hitobito , usually written with an iteration mark as 人々 ). Words for people are usually understood as singular. Thus Tanaka-san usually means Mx Tanaka . Words that refer to people and animals can be made to indicate a group of individuals through
4290-722: Is less common. In terms of mutual intelligibility , a survey in 1967 found that the four most unintelligible dialects (excluding Ryūkyūan languages and Tōhoku dialects ) to students from Greater Tokyo were the Kiso dialect (in the deep mountains of Nagano Prefecture ), the Himi dialect (in Toyama Prefecture ), the Kagoshima dialect and the Maniwa dialect (in Okayama Prefecture ). The survey
4420-429: Is more to just-in-time than its usual manufacturing-centered explication. Inasmuch as manufacturing ends with order-fulfillment to distributors, retailers, and end users, and also includes remanufacturing, repair, and warranty claims, just-in-time's concepts and methods have application downstream from manufacturing itself. A 1993 book on "world-class distribution logistics" discusses kanban links from factories onward, and
4550-420: Is often called a topic-prominent language , which means it has a strong tendency to indicate the topic separately from the subject, and that the two do not always coincide. The sentence Zō wa hana ga nagai ( 象は鼻が長い ) literally means, "As for elephant(s), (the) nose(s) (is/are) long". The topic is zō "elephant", and the subject is hana "nose". Japanese grammar tends toward brevity; the subject or object of
4680-622: Is particularly related to the operational model implemented in the post-war 1950s and 1960s by the Japanese automobile company Toyota called the Toyota Production System (TPS), known in the United States as " The Toyota Way ". Toyota's system was erected on the two pillars of just-in-time inventory management and automated quality control. The seven "wastes" ( muda in Japanese), first formulated by Toyota engineer Shigeo Shingo, are
4810-489: Is preserved in words such as matsuge ("eyelash", lit. "hair of the eye"); modern mieru ("to be visible") and kikoeru ("to be audible") retain a mediopassive suffix - yu(ru) ( kikoyu → kikoyuru (the attributive form, which slowly replaced the plain form starting in the late Heian period) → kikoeru (all verbs with the shimo-nidan conjugation pattern underwent this same shift in Early Modern Japanese )); and
4940-402: Is the version of Japanese discussed in this article. Formerly, standard Japanese in writing ( 文語 , bungo , "literary language") was different from colloquial language ( 口語 , kōgo ) . The two systems have different rules of grammar and some variance in vocabulary. Bungo was the main method of writing Japanese until about 1900; since then kōgo gradually extended its influence and
5070-471: Is used for the present and the future. For verbs that represent an ongoing process, the -te iru form indicates a continuous (or progressive) aspect , similar to the suffix ing in English. For others that represent a change of state, the -te iru form indicates a perfect aspect. For example, kite iru means "They have come (and are still here)", but tabete iru means "They are eating". Questions (both with an interrogative pronoun and yes/no questions) have
5200-405: Is why some linguists do not classify Japanese "pronouns" as pronouns, but rather as referential nouns, much like Spanish usted (contracted from vuestra merced , "your ( majestic plural ) grace") or Portuguese você (from vossa mercê ). Japanese personal pronouns are generally used only in situations requiring special emphasis as to who is doing what to whom. The choice of words used as pronouns
5330-603: The Ainu , Austronesian , Koreanic , and the now-discredited Altaic , but none of these proposals have gained any widespread acceptance. Little is known of the language's prehistory, or when it first appeared in Japan. Chinese documents from the 3rd century AD recorded a few Japanese words, but substantial Old Japanese texts did not appear until the 8th century. From the Heian period (794–1185), extensive waves of Sino-Japanese vocabulary entered
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5460-505: The Japonic language family, which also includes the Ryukyuan languages spoken in the Ryukyu Islands . As these closely related languages are commonly treated as dialects of the same language, Japanese is sometimes called a language isolate . According to Martine Irma Robbeets , Japanese has been subject to more attempts to show its relation to other languages than any other language in
5590-504: The Philippines , and various Pacific islands, locals in those countries learned Japanese as the language of the empire. As a result, many elderly people in these countries can still speak Japanese. Japanese emigrant communities (the largest of which are to be found in Brazil , with 1.4 million to 1.5 million Japanese immigrants and descendants, according to Brazilian IBGE data, more than
5720-716: The United States (notably in Hawaii , where 16.7% of the population has Japanese ancestry, and California ), and the Philippines (particularly in Davao Region and the Province of Laguna ). Japanese has no official status in Japan, but is the de facto national language of the country. There is a form of the language considered standard : hyōjungo ( 標準語 ) , meaning "standard Japanese", or kyōtsūgo ( 共通語 ) , "common language", or even "Tokyo dialect" at times. The meanings of
5850-794: The de facto standard Japanese had been the Kansai dialect , especially that of Kyoto . However, during the Edo period, Edo (now Tokyo) developed into the largest city in Japan, and the Edo-area dialect became standard Japanese. Since the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853, the flow of loanwords from European languages has increased significantly. The period since 1945 has seen many words borrowed from other languages—such as German, Portuguese and English. Many English loan words especially relate to technology—for example, pasokon (short for "personal computer"), intānetto ("internet"), and kamera ("camera"). Due to
5980-475: The "Lean Leadership". This should enable Lean teams to provide suggestions for their managers who then makes the actual decisions about what to implement. Coaching is recommended when an organization starts off with Lean to impart knowledge and skills to shop-floor staff. Improvement metrics are required for informed decision-making. Lean philosophy and culture is as important as tools and methodologies. Management should not decide on solutions without understanding
6110-518: The 1.2 million of the United States ) sometimes employ Japanese as their primary language. Approximately 12% of Hawaii residents speak Japanese, with an estimated 12.6% of the population of Japanese ancestry in 2008. Japanese emigrants can also be found in Peru , Argentina , Australia (especially in the eastern states), Canada (especially in Vancouver , where 1.4% of the population has Japanese ancestry),
6240-486: The 1980s and beyond. An article in a 1984 issue of Inc . magazine relates how Omark Industries (chain saws, ammunition, log loaders, etc.) emerged as an extensive just-in-time implementer under its US home-grown name ZIPS (zero inventory production system). At Omark's mother plant in Portland, Oregon , after the work force had received 40 hours of ZIPS training, they were "turned loose" and things began to happen. A first step
6370-595: The Japanese "leaned out" their processes. "They built smaller factories ... in which the only materials housed in the factory were those on which work was currently being done. In this way, inventory levels were kept low, investment in in-process inventories was at a minimum, and the investment in purchased natural resources was quickly turned around so that additional materials were purchased." Plenert goes on to explain Toyota's key role in developing this lean or just-in-time production methodology. American industrialists recognized
6500-482: The Japanese language is of particular interest, ranging between an apical central tap and a lateral approximant . The "g" is also notable; unless it starts a sentence, it may be pronounced [ ŋ ] , in the Kanto prestige dialect and in other eastern dialects. The phonotactics of Japanese are relatively simple. The syllable structure is (C)(G)V(C), that is, a core vowel surrounded by an optional onset consonant,
6630-724: The Old Japanese sections are written in Man'yōgana , which uses kanji for their phonetic as well as semantic values. Based on the Man'yōgana system, Old Japanese can be reconstructed as having 88 distinct morae . Texts written with Man'yōgana use two different sets of kanji for each of the morae now pronounced き (ki), ひ (hi), み (mi), け (ke), へ (he), め (me), こ (ko), そ (so), と (to), の (no), も (mo), よ (yo) and ろ (ro). (The Kojiki has 88, but all later texts have 87. The distinction between mo 1 and mo 2 apparently
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#17328581467726760-488: The Ryūkyūan languages as dialects of Japanese. The imperial court also seems to have spoken an unusual variant of the Japanese of the time, most likely the spoken form of Classical Japanese , a writing style that was prevalent during the Heian period , but began to decline during the late Meiji period . The Ryūkyūan languages are classified by UNESCO as 'endangered', as young people mostly use Japanese and cannot understand
6890-493: The U.S.-backed Reconstruction and Occupation of Japan following WWII. During this time, an American economist, W. Edwards Deming , and an American statistician, Walter A. Shewhart , had developed some of the earliest modern manufacturing methods and management philosophies. The two experts in their fields were the first to apply newly developed statistical models to improve efficiencies during WWII in defense industry manufacturing. At this time, however, US manufacturers outside of
7020-557: The UK are more international in scope. One of the books, with both conceptual articles and case studies, includes three sections on just-in-time practices: in Japan (e.g., at Toyota, Mazda, and Tokagawa Electric); in Europe (jmg Bostrom, Lucas Electric, Cummins Engine, IBM, 3M, Datasolve Ltd., Renault, Massey Ferguson); and in the US and Australia (Repco Manufacturing-Australia, Xerox Computer, and two on Hewlett-Packard). The second book, reporting on what
7150-543: The addition of a collective suffix (a noun suffix that indicates a group), such as -tachi , but this is not a true plural: the meaning is closer to the English phrase "and company". A group described as Tanaka-san-tachi may include people not named Tanaka. Some Japanese nouns are effectively plural, such as hitobito "people" and wareware "we/us", while the word tomodachi "friend" is considered singular, although plural in form. Verbs are conjugated to show tenses, of which there are two: past and present (or non-past) which
7280-416: The article, risks with implementing Lean can be reduced by: "developing a well-trained, flexible workforce, product designs that are easy to build with high quality, and a supportive, high-performance supplier network" (page 51). Three more books which include just-in-time implementations were published in 1993, 1995, and 1996, which are start-up years of the lean manufacturing/lean management movement that
7410-431: The automotive industry. A goal of the kanban system is to limit the buildup of excess inventory at any point in production. Limits on the number of items waiting at supply points are established and then reduced as inefficiencies are identified and removed. Whenever a limit is exceeded, this points to an inefficiency that should be addressed. In kanban, problem areas are highlighted by measuring lead time and cycle time of
7540-438: The benefits can be nullified by minor delays in the supply chain. It may also impact negatively on workers due to added stress and inflexible conditions. A successful operation depends on a company having regular outputs, high-quality processes, and reliable suppliers. Frederick Taylor and Henry Ford documented their observations relating to these topics, and Shigeo Shingo and Taiichi Ohno applied their enhanced thoughts on
7670-541: The best manufacturers in the world the Deming Prize . In addition to Deming's critical influence, Japanese companies were in a position where they needed an immediate solution to the extreme situation they were living in after World War II. American supply chain specialist Gerhard Plenert has offered four quite vague reasons, paraphrased here. During Japan's post–World War II rebuilding (of economy, infrastructure, industry, political, and social-emotional stability): Thus,
7800-404: The bin on the factory floor is empty (because the parts in it were used up in a manufacturing process), the empty bin and its kanban card are returned to the factory store (the inventory control point). The factory store replaces the empty bin on the factory floor with the full bin from the factory store, which also contains a kanban card. The factory store sends the empty bin with its kanban card to
7930-399: The chain of customer-store processes. In 1953, Toyota applied this logic in their main plant machine shop. A key indicator of the success of production scheduling based on demand, pushing, is the ability of the demand-forecast to create such a push . Kanban, by contrast, is part of an approach where the pull comes from demand and products are made to order . Re-supply or production
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#17328581467728060-399: The commonality of the two terms, Toyota production system (TPS) has been and is widely used as a synonym for both JIT and lean manufacturing. Objectives and benefits of JIT manufacturing may be stated in two primary ways: first, in specific and quantitative terms, via published case studies; second, general listings and discussion. A case-study summary from Daman Products in 1999 lists
8190-622: The defense industry were slow to accept these radical methods. Deming was later assigned to participate in the Reconstruction of Japan by General Douglas MacArthur as a manufacturing consultant. Unlike his experiences in the US, Deming found the Japanese to be very accepting of these new efficiency methods. Many of today's Lean Manufacturing methods introduced by Deming and later innovated in Japan are what we now call Lean Manufacturing. Japanese manufacturers still recognize Deming for his contributions to modern Japanese efficiency practices by awarding
8320-594: The disaster the worse the effect on just-in-time failures. Electrical power is the ultimate example of just-in-time delivery. A severe geomagnetic storm could disrupt electrical power delivery for hours to years, locally or even globally. Lack of supplies on hand to repair the electrical system would have catastrophic effects. The COVID-19 pandemic has caused disruption in JIT practices, with various quarantine restrictions on international trade and commercial activity in general interrupting supply while lacking stockpiles to handle
8450-499: The disruption; along with increased demand for medical supplies like personal protective equipment (PPE) and ventilators, and even panic buying , including of various domestically manufactured (and so less vulnerable) products like panic buying of toilet paper , disturbing regular demand. This has led to suggestions that stockpiles and diversification of suppliers should be more heavily focused. Critics of Lean argue that this management method has significant drawbacks, especially for
8580-519: The early industrial engineering practices of Toyota. This places huge importance upon sponsorship to encourage and protect these experimental developments. Lean management is nowadays implemented also in non-manufacturing processes and administrative processes. In non-manufacturing processes is still huge potential for optimization and efficiency increase. Some people have advocated using STEM resources to teach children Lean thinking instead of computer science. Lean manufacturing methodology has become
8710-564: The effect of changing Japanese into a mora-timed language. Late Middle Japanese covers the years from 1185 to 1600, and is normally divided into two sections, roughly equivalent to the Kamakura period and the Muromachi period , respectively. The later forms of Late Middle Japanese are the first to be described by non-native sources, in this case the Jesuit and Franciscan missionaries; and thus there
8840-409: The employees of companies operating under Lean. Common criticism of Lean is that it fails to take into consideration the employee's safety and well-being. Lean manufacturing is associated with an increased level of stress among employees, who have a small margin of error in their work environment which require perfection. Lean also over-focuses on cutting waste, which may lead management to cut sectors of
8970-455: The flow of loanwords from European languages increased significantly, and words from English roots have proliferated. Japanese is an agglutinative , mora -timed language with relatively simple phonotactics , a pure vowel system, phonemic vowel and consonant length, and a lexically significant pitch-accent . Word order is normally subject–object–verb with particles marking the grammatical function of words, and sentence structure
9100-451: The flow of energy, goods and services. The down-stream customers of those goods and services will, in turn, not be able to produce their product or render their service because they were counting on incoming deliveries "just in time" and so have little or no inventory to work with. The disruption to the economic system will cascade to some degree depending on the nature and severity of the original disaster and may create shortages . The larger
9230-465: The following benefits: reduced cycle times 97%, setup times 50%, lead times from 4 to 8 weeks to 5 to 10 days, flow distance 90%. This was achieved via four focused (cellular) factories, pull scheduling, kanban, visual management, and employee empowerment. Another study from NCR (Dundee, Scotland) in 1998, a producer of make-to-order automated teller machines, includes some of the same benefits while also focusing on JIT purchasing: In switching to JIT over
9360-401: The following manner: A third type involves corporate training . Following the just-in-time principle, computer-based training permits those who need to learn a skill to do so when the need arises, rather than take courses and lose the effectiveness of what they've learned from lack of practice. Japanese language Japanese ( 日本語 , Nihongo , [ɲihoŋɡo] ) is
9490-420: The full process and process steps. One of the main benefits of kanban is to establish an upper limit to work in process (commonly referred as "WIP") inventory to avoid overcapacity. Other systems with similar effect exist, for example CONWIP . A systematic study of various configurations of kanban systems, such as generalized kanban or production authorization card (PAC) and extended kanban , of which CONWIP
9620-609: The genitive particle ga remains in intentionally archaic speech. Early Middle Japanese is the Japanese of the Heian period , from 794 to 1185. It formed the basis for the literary standard of Classical Japanese , which remained in common use until the early 20th century. During this time, Japanese underwent numerous phonological developments, in many cases instigated by an influx of Chinese loanwords . These included phonemic length distinction for both consonants and vowels , palatal consonants (e.g. kya ) and labial consonant clusters (e.g. kwa ), and closed syllables . This had
9750-451: The idea of lean hospital , a concept that prioritizes the patient, thus increasing the employee commitment and motivation, as well as boosting medical quality and cost effectiveness. Lean principles also have applications to software development and maintenance as well as other sectors of information technology (IT). More generally, the use of lean in information technology has become known as Lean IT . Lean methods are also applicable to
9880-438: The idea of applying shelf-stocking techniques to the factory floor. In a supermarket, customers generally retrieve what they need at the required time—no more, no less. Furthermore, the supermarket stocks only what it expects to sell in a given time, and customers take only what they need, because future supply is assured. This observation led Toyota to view a process as being a customer of one or more preceding processes and to view
10010-490: The inventory system. A good kanban system calculates just enough kanban cards for each product. Most factories that use kanban use the colored board system ( heijunka box ). Many manufacturers have implemented electronic kanban (sometimes referred to as e-kanban) systems. These help to eliminate common problems such as manual entry errors and lost cards. E-kanban systems can be integrated into enterprise resource planning (ERP) systems, enabling real-time demand signaling across
10140-407: The kanban does what is required. Toyota has formulated six rules for the application of kanban: Kanban cards are a key component of kanban and they signal the need to move materials within a production facility or to move materials from an outside supplier into the production facility. The kanban card is, in effect, a message that signals a depletion of product, parts, or inventory. When received,
10270-473: The kanban triggers replenishment of that product, part, or inventory. Consumption, therefore, drives demand for more production, and the kanban card signals demand for more product—so kanban cards help create a demand-driven system. It is widely held by proponents of lean production and manufacturing that demand-driven systems lead to faster turnarounds in production and lower inventory levels, helping companies implementing such systems be more competitive. In
10400-430: The language, affecting the phonology of Early Middle Japanese . Late Middle Japanese (1185–1600) saw extensive grammatical changes and the first appearance of European loanwords . The basis of the standard dialect moved from the Kansai region to the Edo region (modern Tokyo ) in the Early Modern Japanese period (early 17th century–mid 19th century). Following the end of Japan's self-imposed isolation in 1853,
10530-453: The languages of the original Jōmon inhabitants, including the ancestor of the modern Ainu language . Because writing had yet to be introduced from China, there is no direct evidence, and anything that can be discerned about this period must be based on internal reconstruction from Old Japanese , or comparison with the Ryukyuan languages and Japanese dialects . The Chinese writing system
10660-449: The languages. Okinawan Japanese is a variant of Standard Japanese influenced by the Ryūkyūan languages, and is the primary dialect spoken among young people in the Ryukyu Islands . Modern Japanese has become prevalent nationwide (including the Ryūkyū islands) due to education , mass media , and an increase in mobility within Japan, as well as economic integration. Japanese is a member of
10790-427: The large quantity of English loanwords, modern Japanese has developed a distinction between [tɕi] and [ti] , and [dʑi] and [di] , with the latter in each pair only found in loanwords. Although Japanese is spoken almost exclusively in Japan, it has also been spoken outside of the country. Before and during World War II , through Japanese annexation of Taiwan and Korea , as well as partial occupation of China ,
10920-414: The last few years, systems sending kanban signals electronically have become more widespread. While this trend is leading to a reduction in the use of kanban cards in aggregate, it is still common in modern lean production facilities to find the use of kanban cards. In various software systems, kanban is used for signalling demand to suppliers through email notifications. When stock of a particular component
11050-660: The manufacturing process to signal usage. The scans relay messages to internal/external stores to ensure the restocking of products. Electronic kanban often uses the Internet as a method of routing messages to external suppliers and as a means to allow a real-time view of inventory, via a portal, throughout the supply chain. Organizations like the Ford Motor Company and Bombardier Aerospace have used electronic kanban systems to improve processes. Systems are now widespread from single solutions or bolt on modules to ERP systems . In
11180-552: The method), the waste of waiting (inactive working periods due to job queues), and the waste of making defective products (reworking to fix avoidable defects in products and processes). The term Lean was coined in 1988 by American businessman John Krafcik in his article "Triumph of the Lean Production System," and defined in 1996 by American researchers James Womack and Daniel Jones to consist of five key principles: "Precisely specify value by specific product, identify
11310-424: The methodology as the "Ohno system", after Taiichi Ohno , who was instrumental in its development within Toyota. The other article, by Toyota authors in an international journal, provided additional details. Finally, those and other publicity were translated into implementations, beginning in 1980 and then quickly multiplying throughout industry in the United States and other developed countries. A seminal 1980 event
11440-634: The notion of "pull" (or "build-to-order" rather than target-driven "push") came to underpin production scheduling. Just-in-time manufacturing was introduced in Australia in the 1950s by the British Motor Corporation (Australia) at its Victoria Park plant in Sydney, from where the idea later migrated to Toyota. News about just-in-time/Toyota production system reached other western countries from Japan in 1977 in two English-language articles: one referred to
11570-425: The only strict rule of word order is that the verb must be placed at the end of a sentence (possibly followed by sentence-end particles). This is because Japanese sentence elements are marked with particles that identify their grammatical functions. The basic sentence structure is topic–comment . For example, Kochira wa Tanaka-san desu ( こちらは田中さんです ). kochira ("this") is the topic of the sentence, indicated by
11700-470: The out-group gives a benefit to the in-group, and "up" to indicate the in-group gives a benefit to the out-group. Here, the in-group includes the speaker and the out-group does not, and their boundary depends on context. For example, oshiete moratta ( 教えてもらった ) (literally, "explaining got" with a benefit from the out-group to the in-group) means "[he/she/they] explained [it] to [me/us]". Similarly, oshiete ageta ( 教えてあげた ) (literally, "explaining gave" with
11830-415: The particle wa . The verb desu is a copula , commonly translated as "to be" or "it is" (though there are other verbs that can be translated as "to be"), though technically it holds no meaning and is used to give a sentence 'politeness'. As a phrase, Tanaka-san desu is the comment. This sentence literally translates to "As for this person, (it) is Mx Tanaka." Thus Japanese, like many other Asian languages,
11960-421: The postwar economy of Japan were low; as a result, the focus of mass production on lowest cost per item via economies of scale had little application. Having visited and seen supermarkets in the United States, Ohno recognized that the scheduling of work should not be driven by sales or production targets but by actual sales. Given the financial situation during this period, over-production had to be avoided, and thus
12090-426: The preceding processes as a kind of store. Kanban aligns inventory levels with actual consumption. A signal tells a supplier to produce and deliver a new shipment when a material is consumed. This signal is tracked through the replenishment cycle, bringing visibility to the supplier, consumer, and buyer. Kanban uses the rate of demand to control the rate of production, passing demand from the end customer up through
12220-593: The principal language of the Japonic language family spoken by the Japanese people . It has around 123 million speakers, primarily in Japan , the only country where it is the national language , and within the Japanese diaspora worldwide. The Japonic family also includes the Ryukyuan languages and the variously classified Hachijō language . There have been many attempts to group the Japonic languages with other families such as
12350-671: The products of the cheaper labor of other countries. To maintain this condition, to strengthen our control of home markets, and, above all, to broaden our opportunities in foreign markets where we must compete with the products of other industrial nations, we should welcome and encourage every influence tending to increase the efficiency of our productive processes." Continuous production improvement and incentives for such were documented in Taylor's Principles of Scientific Management (1911): Shigeo Shingo cites reading Principles of Scientific Management in 1931 and being "greatly impressed to make
12480-477: The proposed larger Altaic family, or to various Southeast Asian languages , especially Austronesian . None of these proposals have gained wide acceptance (and the Altaic family itself is now considered controversial). As it stands, only the link to Ryukyuan has wide support. Other theories view the Japanese language as an early creole language formed through inputs from at least two distinct language groups, or as
12610-555: The public sector, but most results have been achieved using a much more restricted range of techniques than lean provides. The challenge in moving lean to services is the lack of widely available reference implementations to allow people to see how directly applying lean manufacturing tools and practices can work and the impact it does have. This makes it more difficult to build the level of belief seen as necessary for strong implementation. However, some research does relate widely recognized examples of success in retail and even airlines to
12740-408: The repair of poor-quality castings. Toyota engaged in intense study of each stage of the process. In 1936, when Toyota won its first truck contract with the Japanese government, the processes encountered new problems, to which Toyota responded by developing Kaizen improvement teams, which into what has become the Toyota Production System (TPS), and subsequently The Toyota Way . Levels of demand in
12870-479: The response system of stocks directly to the suppliers companies. In 1999, Spear and Bowen identified four rules which characterize the "Toyota DNA": This is a fundamentally different approach from most improvement methodologies, and requires more persistence than basic application of the tools, which may partially account for its lack of popularity. The implementation of "smooth flow" exposes quality problems that already existed, and waste reduction then happens as
13000-436: The same measures. At the time about half of H-P's 52 divisions had adopted JIT. Lean principles have been successfully applied to various sectors and services, such as call centers and healthcare. In the former, lean's waste reduction practices have been used to reduce handle time, within and between agent variation, accent barriers, as well as attain near perfect process adherence. In the latter, several hospitals have adopted
13130-459: The same structure as affirmative sentences, but with intonation rising at the end. In the formal register, the question particle -ka is added. For example, ii desu ( いいです ) "It is OK" becomes ii desu-ka ( いいですか。 ) "Is it OK?". In a more informal tone sometimes the particle -no ( の ) is added instead to show a personal interest of the speaker: Dōshite konai-no? "Why aren't (you) coming?". Some simple queries are formed simply by mentioning
13260-439: The speaker, the listener, and persons mentioned. The Japanese writing system combines Chinese characters , known as kanji ( 漢字 , ' Han characters') , with two unique syllabaries (or moraic scripts) derived by the Japanese from the more complex Chinese characters: hiragana ( ひらがな or 平仮名 , 'simple characters') and katakana ( カタカナ or 片仮名 , 'partial characters'). Latin script ( rōmaji ローマ字 )
13390-797: The state as at the time the constitution was written, many of the elders participating in the process had been educated in Japanese during the South Seas Mandate over the island shown by the 1958 census of the Trust Territory of the Pacific that found that 89% of Palauans born between 1914 and 1933 could speak and read Japanese, but as of the 2005 Palau census there were no residents of Angaur that spoke Japanese at home. Japanese dialects typically differ in terms of pitch accent , inflectional morphology , vocabulary , and particle usage. Some even differ in vowel and consonant inventories, although this
13520-476: The street. (grammatically incorrect insertion of a pronoun) But one can grammatically say essentially the same thing in Japanese: 驚いた彼は道を走っていった。 Transliteration: Odoroita kare wa michi o hashitte itta. (grammatically correct) This is partly because these words evolved from regular nouns, such as kimi "you" ( 君 "lord"), anata "you" ( あなた "that side, yonder"), and boku "I" ( 僕 "servant"). This
13650-407: The study and practice of scientific management his life's work". Shingo and Taiichi Ohno were key to the design of Toyota's manufacturing process. Previously a textile company, Toyota moved into building automobiles in 1934. Kiichiro Toyoda , the founder of Toyota Motor Corporation, directed the engine casting work and discovered many problems in their manufacturing, with wasted resources on
13780-558: The subject at Toyota in the late 1940s after World War II. The resulting methods were researched in the mid-20th century and dubbed Lean by John Krafcik in 1988, and then were defined in The Machine that Changed the World and further detailed by James Womack and Daniel Jones in Lean Thinking (1996). The adoption of just-in-time manufacturing in Japan can be traced back directly to
13910-439: The supplier. The supplier's full product bin, with its kanban card, is delivered to the factory store; the supplier keeps the empty bin. This is the final step in the process. Thus, the process never runs out of product—and could be described as a closed loop, in that it provides the exact amount required, with only one spare bin so there is never oversupply. This 'spare' bin allows for uncertainties in supply, use, and transport in
14040-635: The supply chain and improved visibility. Data pulled from e-kanban systems can be used to optimize inventory levels by better tracking supplier lead and replenishment times. E-kanban is a signaling system that uses a mix of technology to trigger the movement of materials within a manufacturing or production facility. Electronic kanban differs from traditional kanban in using technology to replace traditional elements like kanban cards with barcodes and electronic messages like email or electronic data interchange . A typical electronic kanban system marks inventory with barcodes, which workers scan at various stages of
14170-424: The supply response is not quick enough to meet actual demand fluctuations, thereby causing potential lost sales, a stock building may be deemed more appropriate and is achieved by placing more kanban in the system. Taiichi Ohno stated that to be effective, kanban must follow strict rules of use. Toyota, for example, has six simple rules, and close monitoring of these rules is a never-ending task, thereby ensuring that
14300-506: The threat of cheap offshore labor to American workers during the 1910s and explicitly stated the goal of what is now called lean manufacturing as a countermeasure. Henry Towne, past president of the American Society of Mechanical Engineers , wrote in the foreword to Frederick Winslow Taylor's Shop Management (1911), "We are justly proud of the high wage rates which prevail throughout our country, and jealous of any interference with them by
14430-557: The topic with an interrogative intonation to call for the hearer's attention: Kore wa? "(What about) this?"; O-namae wa? ( お名前は？ ) "(What's your) name?". Negatives are formed by inflecting the verb. For example, Pan o taberu ( パンを食べる。 ) "I will eat bread" or "I eat bread" becomes Pan o tabenai ( パンを食べない。 ) "I will not eat bread" or "I do not eat bread". Plain negative forms are i -adjectives (see below) and inflect as such, e.g. Pan o tabenakatta ( パンを食べなかった。 ) "I did not eat bread". Lean production Lean manufacturing
14560-496: The true problem by consulting shop floor personnel. The solution to a specific problem for a specific company may not have generalized application. The solution must fit the problem. Value-stream mapping (VSM) and 5S are the most common approaches companies take on their first steps to Lean. Lean can be focused on specific processes, or cover the entire supply chain. Front-line workers should be involved in VSM activities. Implementing
14690-419: The two consonants are the moraic nasal followed by a homorganic consonant. Japanese also includes a pitch accent , which is not represented in moraic writing; for example [haꜜ.ɕi] ("chopsticks") and [ha.ɕiꜜ] ("bridge") are both spelled はし ( hashi ) , and are only differentiated by the tone contour. Japanese word order is classified as subject–object–verb . Unlike many Indo-European languages ,
14820-577: The two methods were both used in writing until the 1940s. Bungo still has some relevance for historians, literary scholars, and lawyers (many Japanese laws that survived World War II are still written in bungo , although there are ongoing efforts to modernize their language). Kōgo is the dominant method of both speaking and writing Japanese today, although bungo grammar and vocabulary are occasionally used in modern Japanese for effect. The 1982 state constitution of Angaur , Palau , names Japanese along with Palauan and English as an official language of
14950-472: The two terms (''hyōjungo'' and ''kyōtsūgo'') are almost the same. Hyōjungo or kyōtsūgo is a conception that forms the counterpart of dialect. This normative language was born after the Meiji Restoration ( 明治維新 , meiji ishin , 1868) from the language spoken in the higher-class areas of Tokyo (see Yamanote ). Hyōjungo is taught in schools and used on television and in official communications. It
15080-440: The underlying principles of lean. Despite this, it remains the case that the direct manufacturing examples of 'techniques' or 'tools' need to be better 'translated' into a service context to support the more prominent approaches of implementation, which has not yet received the level of work or publicity that would give starting points for implementors. The upshot of this is that each implementation often 'feels its way' along as must
15210-422: The value stream for each product, make value flow without interruptions, let customer pull value from the producer, and pursue perfection." Companies employ the strategy to increase efficiency. By receiving goods only as they need them for the production process, it reduces inventory costs and wastage, and increases productivity and profit. The downside is that it requires producers to forecast demand accurately as
15340-407: The verb (e.g. yonde for earlier yomite ), the -k- in the final mora of adjectives drops out ( shiroi for earlier shiroki ); and some forms exist where modern standard Japanese has retained the earlier form (e.g. hayaku > hayau > hayɔɔ , where modern Japanese just has hayaku , though the alternative form is preserved in the standard greeting o-hayō gozaimasu "good morning"; this ending
15470-405: The waste of superfluous inventory of raw material and finished goods, the waste of overproduction (producing more than what is needed now), the waste of over-processing (processing or making parts beyond the standard expected by customer), the waste of transportation (unnecessary movement of people and goods inside the system), the waste of excess motion (mechanizing or automating before improving
15600-548: The world. Since Japanese first gained the consideration of linguists in the late 19th century, attempts have been made to show its genealogical relation to languages or language families such as Ainu , Korean , Chinese , Tibeto-Burman , Uralic , Altaic (or Ural-Altaic ), Austroasiatic , Austronesian and Dravidian . At the fringe, some linguists have even suggested a link to Indo-European languages , including Greek , or to Sumerian . Main modern theories try to link Japanese either to northern Asian languages, like Korean or
15730-509: Was Walt Goddard's, "Kanban Versus MRP II—Which Is Best for You?" in 1982. Four years later, Goddard had answered his own question with a book advocating just-in-time. Among the best known of MRP II's advocates was George Plossl, who authored two articles questioning just-in-time's kanban planning method and the "japanning of America". But, as with Goddard, Plossl later wrote that "JIT is a concept whose time has come". Just-in-time/TPS implementations may be found in many case-study articles from
15860-769: Was a conference in Detroit at Ford World Headquarters co-sponsored by the Repetitive Manufacturing Group (RMG), which had been founded 1979 within the American Production and Inventory Control Society (APICS) to seek advances in manufacturing. The principal speaker, Fujio Cho (later, president of Toyota Motor Corp.), in explaining the Toyota system, stirred up the audience, and led to the RMG's shifting gears from things like automation to just-in-time/Toyota production system. At least some of audience's stirring had to do with
15990-535: Was based on 12- to 20-second-long recordings of 135 to 244 phonemes , which 42 students listened to and translated word-for-word. The listeners were all Keio University students who grew up in the Kanto region . There are some language islands in mountain villages or isolated islands such as Hachijō-jima island , whose dialects are descended from Eastern Old Japanese . Dialects of the Kansai region are spoken or known by many Japanese, and Osaka dialect in particular
16120-717: Was billed as the First International Conference on just-in-time manufacturing, includes case studies in three companies: Repco-Australia, IBM-UK, and 3M-UK. In addition, a day two keynote address discussed just-in-time as applied "across all disciplines, ... from accounting and systems to design and production". John Krafcik coined the term Lean in his 1988 article, "Triumph of the Lean Production System". The article states: (a) Lean manufacturing plants have higher levels of productivity/quality than non-Lean and (b) "The level of plant technology seems to have little effect on operating performance" (page 51). According to
16250-463: Was cut by 92%, productivity increased by 30%, scrap and rework ... dropped 20%, and lead time ... from order to finished product was slashed from three weeks to three days." The Inc . article states that companies using just-in-time the most extensively include "the Big Four, Hewlett-Packard , Motorola, Westinghouse Electric , General Electric , Deere & Company , and Black and Decker ". By 1986,
16380-718: Was imported to Japan from Baekje around the start of the fifth century, alongside Buddhism. The earliest texts were written in Classical Chinese , although some of these were likely intended to be read as Japanese using the kanbun method, and show influences of Japanese grammar such as Japanese word order. The earliest text, the Kojiki , dates to the early eighth century, and was written entirely in Chinese characters, which are used to represent, at different times, Chinese, kanbun , and Old Japanese. As in other texts from this period,
16510-495: Was launched in 1990 with publication of the book, The Machine That Changed the World . That one, along with other books, articles, and case studies on lean, were supplanting just-in-time terminology in the 1990s and beyond. The same period, saw the rise of books and articles with similar concepts and methodologies but with alternative names, including cycle time management , time-based competition , quick-response manufacturing , flow, and pull-based production systems . There
16640-465: Was lost immediately following its composition.) This set of morae shrank to 67 in Early Middle Japanese , though some were added through Chinese influence. Man'yōgana also has a symbol for /je/ , which merges with /e/ before the end of the period. Several fossilizations of Old Japanese grammatical elements remain in the modern language – the genitive particle tsu (superseded by modern no )
16770-421: Was mentioned by Goddard, who said that "Toyota Production System is often mistakenly referred to as the 'Kanban System'", and pointed out that kanban is but one element of TPS, as well as JIT production. The wide use of the term JIT manufacturing throughout the 1980s faded fast in the 1990s, as the new term lean manufacturing became established as "a more recent name for JIT". As just one testament to
16900-546: Was to "arbitrarily eliminate a week's lead time [after which] things ran smoother. 'People asked that we try taking another week's worth out.' After that, ZIPS spread throughout the plant's operations 'like an amoeba.'" The article also notes that Omark's 20 other plants were similarly engaged in ZIPS, beginning with pilot projects. For example, at one of Omark's smaller plants making drill bits in Mesabi, Minnesota , "large-size drill inventory
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