A value stream is all the steps (both value added and non-value added) in a process that the customer is willing to pay for in order to bring a product or service through the main flows essential to producing that product or service.

Variation Mode and Effect Analysis – VMEA - A statistically based engineering method developed to facilitate an understanding of unwanted variation and finding product/process areas with greatest improvement potential. The method has some similarities with FMEA (Failure Mode and Effect Analysis), however, it focuses on analyzing sources of variation and their influence on critical product/process characteristics instead of looking at failure modes.

The “voice of the business” is the term used to describe the stated and unstated needs or requirements of the business shareholders

The “voice of the customer” is the term used to describe the stated and unstated needs or requirements of the customer. The voice of the customer can be captured in a variety of ways: Direct discussion or interviews, surveys, focus groups, customer specifications, observation, warranty data, field reports, complaint logs, etc.

The “voice of the employee” is the term used to describe the stated and unstated needs or requirements of the employees of your business.

The “voice of the process” term used to describe what the process is telling you. What it is capable of achieving, whether it is under control and what significance to attach to individual measurements – are they part of natural variation or a signal that needs to be dealt with?

WBT – A learning mode thru web based technology

Yield is the percentage of a process that is free of defects. Yield is also defined as a percentage of met commitments (total of defect free events) over the total number of opportunities.

Zadj - The probability of a defect when defects are correlated. For example, when linewidths are printed too wide the process can cause thousands of ‘bridging’ defects, so although the number of defects is extremely high, there is only one opportunity.

Taguchi Method – A technique for designing and performing experiments to investigate processes where the output depends on many factors (variables; inputs) without having to tediously and uneconomically run the process using all possible combinations of values of those variables.

Takt Time is “Beat Time”, “Rate Time” or “Heart Beat”. Lean Production uses Takt Time as the rate that a completed product needs to be finished in order to meet customer demand. If you have a Takt Time of two minutes that means every two minutes a complete product, assembly or machine is produced off the line. Every two hours, two days or two weeks, whatever your sell rate is your Takt Time.

TAT - Turn Around Time
TEAM is defined as an unit whichTotally (effectively) and Efficiently Achieves the Milestones.

Theory of constraints (TOC) - Also called constraints management, it is a set of tools that examines the entire system for continuous improvement. The current reality tree, conflict resolution diagram, future reality tree, prerequisite tree and transition tree are the five tools used in its ongoing improvement process.

Thought Process Map – TMAP - A visual representation of a person’s or team’s thoughts that act as a roadmap to progress through DMAIC; additionally, it is a living document that will change throughout the project and has no set forma

Thulla is the term defined for the resource waste time during the processing due to the motivational reasons.

A Time Value Map is generated by tracking a work item through the process and tracking where it spends its time. Only work that is seen as Value added by the customer is plotted above the middle line; everything else is waste in their eyes.

TPM – Stands for Total Productive Maintenanace. Used to increase time between failure (MTBF) or life of machinery.

TQM- Total Quality Management
TVM - Total Value Management

The trivial many refers to the variables that are least likely responsible for variation in a process, product, or service.

TRIZ (pronounced “TREEZ”, the Russian acronym for the Theory of Inventive Problem Solving) is an established science, methodology, tools and knowledge- and model-based technology for stimulating and generating innovative ideas and solutions for problem solving.

UCL – Upper Control Limit (note, different from USL): representing a 3 x sigma upwards deviation from the mean value of a variable (see also LCL). For normally distributed output, 99.7% should fall between UCL and LCL.

USL – An upper specification limit, also known as an upper spec limit, or USL, is a value below which performance of a product or process is acceptable.

Continue to Common terms used in Lean and Six Sigma projects (V-Z)

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