3Cs: Three questions to correct a problem – concern, cause and countermeasure.
7 wastes: The 7 types of waste in a process – transport, inventory, motion, waiting, over-processing, over-production, and defects.
Affinity diagram: A means to organize data and ideas relating to your process.
Cause and effect diagram: A problem-solving tool used to form relationships between effects and causes. The effect is revealed via branches (fishbones) showing different causes of it.
Control charts (Shewhart charts): A chart that shows if a process is in control.
COPQ: What is the cost of failing to meet a customer’s expectation, covering views such as internal, external, inspection, prevention and missed opportunities.
Countermeasure: The actions taken to address the root causes of problems which prevent you from achieving your goals.
Continuous improvement: Increasing business effectiveness by reducing inefficiencies, frustrations, and waste (time, effort, material, etc.).
Daily management: Giving daily attention to issues which occur within business as usual.
DMAIC: A main concept of Six Sigma methodology, a process covering define, measure, analyze, improve and control.
Flow: The state of a process in which the parts move from one step to the other in a steady, continuous stream without reducing quality.
Lean: The striving of avoiding waste, boosting quality and driving continuous improvement in all processes.
Operational excellence: The destination of continuous improvement activity is reaching a state of operational excellence, where all employees can see the flow of value to the customer, and fix that flow before it breaks down.
PDCA: Plan-Do-Check-Act is a four-step business management method to continuously improve processes and products.
Root cause: The core reason for an issue with a process.
SIPOC: A tool to summarize inputs and outputs of processes. It covers suppliers, inputs, process, outputs, and customers.
Six Sigma: Management techniques to improve processes by reducing likelihood of errors / defects. It’s directly connected to the DMAIC system.
Value stream mapping: A process map that captures information, process flow and performance data and looks at current vs future states of a process.
Voice of the Customer: The “Voice of the Customer” is the term used to describe the stated and unstated needs or requirements of the customer.
Yokoten: The Japanese phrase for horizontally deploying learnings / method is all about identifying issues, using a process, sharing results and then applying this elsewhere to create a larger impact on the business.