04/03/2010 Yamazumi Boards

Yamazumi Boards

Yamazumi Chart - Example

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.

The Five Advantages of Yamazumi Boards

1. It's visu al. If a picture is worth a thousand words, it's worth a hundred thousand figures. With Yamazumi charts (also
known as Yamazumi boards as they literally are signboards in the "visual factory"), workers can immediately and intuitively
see where the delays are coming from.

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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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.

Yamazumi Your Life

Yamazumi Your Life!
Applies business strategies to revolutionise your life. Why should lean production only be used in factories when the
same concepts can help you in your daily life.

Yamazumi Your Life!

Are the Yamazumi Boards only useful if you work in a Japanese car factory? Think again. This innocent little stacked bar
charts can turbocharge your life.

(1) In the office

Take any task in the office which is burdensome and complex. It may be anything from cutting code or drafting legal
documents. Regardless of its nature, every business process will have three features - preparation time, execution time that
adds value and blockages or delays that slow the process.
Draw up a simple Yamazumi for your chosen process. Look out for the "hidden factory" of re-work. This represents the COPQ
(cost of poor quality) in the process which is rarely evaluated or calculated correctly because it is often not measured. How
can you improve your process to make the bar as green as possible, and shorten the cycle time?

(2) Th e Whole Life Yamazumi

I challenge you to map your entire life as a Yamazumi Chart for an entire week. This can be done in a simple spreadsheet.
First, break your week down into seven columns of 24 hours. This isn't intended as an exercise in creating unnecessary work,
so just give your time buckets a quick summary e.g. "lunch" or "gym" and assign a colour to the chunk of this time. Lunch
would be Yellow because it is a maintenance rather than a "value add" function. Then map your Yamazumi chart, hour by
hour, to see where the real value is.

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.

The Yamazumi Board, you will find, has real power.

(c) WestOcean 2009

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