In a Lean manufacturing setting, products are ideally “pulled” through the value stream, one piece at a time, continually. There might be ti...

5S is part of the Lean approach to of “visual management,” as a way to show problems and irregularities, so they can be fixed quickly. As su...

Mary is licensed veterinary technician. When a shocky, weak puppy was presented, Dr. A tells her that a PCV and blood glucose is always indi...

JIT, one of the two pillars of the Toyota Production System, is the procurement and delivery of resources, whether that be drugs, supplies, ...

The Japanese word for “sign” or “signboard” is kanban. It is a visual means of requesting a resource, e.g. supplies, inventory, maintenance,...

This is the Lean concept that value should be “pulled” from downstream in the value stream by a consumer, backward up the value stream. “Pul...

In Japanese, the word for waste is muda. Any time, activity or resources that do not add value can be considered waste. Traditionally, there...

For us in veterinary medicine, the external customer is, of course, the client. They are the reason that we are in business, the initiator o...

In Japanese, gemba means “the real place.” This is the place where work happens; where the facts can be found. In veterinary medicine, it wo...

  The value stream is the overall high-level sequence of steps necessary to take a product or service from start to finish (and the delays t...