Yamazumi Charts

Yamazumi ?

A Yamazumi chart is a stacked bar chart that shows the balance of cycle time workloads between a number of operators typically in an assembly line or work cell. The Yamazumi chart can be either for a single product or multi product assembly line. 

 Yamazumi is a Japanese word that literally means to stack up. Toyota uses Yamazumi work balance charts to visually present the work content of a series of tasks and facilitate work balancing and the isolation and elimination of non-value added work content.

Standard Work Sheets (SWS)

Standardized work is one of the most powerful but least used lean tools. By documenting the current best practice, standardized work forms the baseline for kaizen or continuous improvement. As the standard is improved, the new standard becomes the baseline for further improvements, and so on. Improving standardized work is a never-ending process.

Standardized work consists of three elements:

• Takt time - which is the rate at which products must be made in a process to meet customer demand.
• The precise work sequence in which an operator performs tasks within takt time.
• The standard inventory, including units in machines, required to keep the process operating smoothly.