What is Lean Manufacturing and where did the term come from? Last verified: 16 May 2026. Lean Manufacturing is a production methodology focused on systematic elimination of waste (muda) and continuous flow of value to the customer. The term was coined by John Krafcik...
What is Total Productive Maintenance and what are its 8 pillars? Last verified: 16 May 2026. Total Productive Maintenance (TPM) is a manufacturing methodology that integrates equipment maintenance with the operational responsibility of production teams. The...
What is Theory of Constraints and how does it integrate with Lean? Last verified: 16 May 2026. Theory of Constraints (TOC) is a management methodology developed by Eliyahu M. Goldratt and introduced in The Goal: A Process of Ongoing Improvement (North River Press,...
What is Andon and why is line-stop authority the core of it? Last verified: 16 May 2026. Andon (アンドン, from the Japanese word for paper lantern) is a visual management and signaling system developed at Toyota in the 1950s-1960s as a core element of the Toyota...
Availability, Performance, Quality: how are the three OEE components defined? Last verified: 16 May 2026. Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is the product of three components: Availability, Performance, and Quality. Each is independently defined in ISO...
What are the Six Big Losses and how do they map to OEE? Last verified: 16 May 2026. The Six Big Losses are a categorization of production losses introduced by Seiichi Nakajima in Introduction to TPM: Total Productive Maintenance (Productivity Press, 1988, ISBN...
What is MTTR and which of the four MTTR variants do you actually want? Last verified: 16 May 2026. Mean Time To Repair (MTTR) is a maintainability metric defined in MIL-HDBK-338B (Electronic Reliability Design Handbook, U.S. Department of Defense, 1 October 1998,...
What is MTBF and how is it calculated correctly? Last verified: 16 May 2026. Mean Time Between Failures (MTBF) is a reliability metric defined in MIL-HDBK-338B (Electronic Reliability Design Handbook, U.S. Department of Defense, 1 October 1998, Section 3) as the...
What is TEEP and when should it be used instead of OEE? Last verified: 16 May 2026. Total Effective Equipment Performance (TEEP) is a manufacturing performance metric that measures actual production output against calendar time, rather than against planned production...
What is OEE and how is it calculated under ISO 22400? Last verified: 16 May 2026. Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE) is a manufacturing performance metric defined as the product of Availability, Performance, and Quality. The concept was introduced by Seiichi...
