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Yamazumi Boards
Yamazumi Boards
Yamazumi Charts are typically found in Japanese factories that use the lean production concepts made famous by the Toyota
Production System. This hub shows how you can create Yamazumi charts to improve any process in your home or office.
So what is a Yamazumi chart? Think of it as a revolutionary, visual method of identifying the roadblocks in a business
process. This example shows a simple printing process at a copy shop.
A Yamazumi board is just a stacked bar chart. In Japanese, the word "Yamazumi" literally means "to stack up". The business
process starts at the base of the column, and each block is shown by minutes taken. The aim is to show operator and process
cycle times.
1. The steps that are necessary to the process but do not really "add value" are in or an ge.
2. The steps that make a real difference - the execution steps - are in gr een.
3. The waste in the process - the blockage or failure mode - is in red. In this example the problem is a breakdown in the
printing machine that requires time and energy to fix.
These are the failures that must be eliminated through such lean production techniques as kaizen (continuous
improvement) and p oka-yoke (simple but effective) solutions. For more advanced business problems Six Sigma thinking
can be used to analyse the root causes of problems using the celebrated DMAIC (Define - Measure - Analyse - Improve -
Control) methodology.
2. It's simple. Clarity is power. Who needs a management consultant's detailed report, when a Yamazumi Board tells the
story at a single glance.
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04/03/2010 Yamazumi Boards
3. It's inescapable. Hanging above the production line, the Yamazumi Board is a constant, perpetual exhortation to
continuous improvement, or Kaizen.
4. It's public. This one can't go straight to the "circular file". The Yamazumi Board is in the open, glaringly so. With
competitive work teams, this is a great motivator to positive performance improvement. Nothing motivates better than public
disclosure of results among colleagues.
5. It pinpoints the vital few op por tunities that can change everything. Remember the Pareto Principle. 20% of all causes
account for 80% of results. With a Yamazumi Board, you can see visually where the key constraints, the key roadblocks are.
Magnify the power of your process by focusing on the "vital few". This is a key Six Sigma principle as the Y=f(x) methodology
explains. Inputs drive outputs, and you should focus on the inputs to deliver better outputs.
The Yamazumi board proves that simplicity really is power. Remember the philosophical concept of Occam's razor? This
arose from the wise words of 14th century English physician William of Ockham. He argued that "entities should not be
multiplied unecessarily", meaning that the simplest theory solution is usually the best. A Yamazumi board will help you find it.
This may seem an odd exercise, but it might be just as eye-opening for you as it was for the workers on the Toyota line when
they first implemented the lean production strategies that became globally famous as the Toyota Production System. You can
read the full story in "The Machine That Changed The World" by Womack, Jones and Roos.
As the Pareto principle suggests, a few key inputs yield impressive outputs. And the sheer amount of time spent on non-value
added activities (watching TV) or maintenance activities (sleeping, eating) is astounding. Even the green activities may be
sub-optimal, because there is opportunity cost - some actions yield more fruit than others. You realise after a time that just a
few modifications, a few tweaks to the production line, could - if they are consistently maintained - change your life.
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