Category: Glossar – Englisch

Gemba (Japanese for “the place where it happens”) is a Lean Managements tool that refers to the location where value-adding activities are performed, such as the production floor or an office workstation. Its key component is the Gemba Walk, which takes the practitioner directly to the actual workplace. The goal is to become familiar with the real work situation, gather facts, and learn to “see” the problems firsthand. This approach helps identify value-adding activities, as well as waste, and uncovers improvement potential and ways to address root causes of problems. Gemba Walks are not limited to specific areas; they can be conducted for any focus topic.

FTA, short for Fault Tree Analysis is a tool from quality management used to capture and represent potential cause-and-effect relationships, often employed in Root Cause Analysis. It is primarily used in aerospace, nuclear industries, and chemistry. Fault Tree Analysis is a structured top-down tool for identifying faults, based on Boolean logic: an event or undesired outcome is represented as a result of various basic and intermediate events, with failure probabilities assigned to individual basic events.

FMEA (short for Failure Mode and Effects Analysis) is used preventively to identify and avoid potential errors that could occur in a product, process, or service. This tool is valuable in Lean Six Sigma projects as it helps uncover and eliminate not only potential errors but also their root causes, thereby preventing further negative consequences, particularly from the customer’s perspective. After listing possible errors (and their causes), they are classified and assessed based on the likelihood of their occurrence and their significance. FMEA also helps calculate useful values like the Risk Priority Number (RPN).

First Pass Yield or FPY, is a metric from quality management used to measure process performance. It reflects the proportion of products produced in a process that are defect-free, meaning they do not require rework. By determining the FPY , it is possible to identify waste (hidden factory), reduce rework, and increase process yield.

A Check Card provides a clear overview of potential defects and their frequency of occurrence. The data is based on the examiner’s own observations. This tool from quality management helps in identifying defects and their causes. Possible defects are categorized, and the Check Card also includes information about the product or process being examined for defects, the examiner, and the testing procedure. Each individual defect that occurs is marked with a tally. Summing up the results afterward allows conclusions to be drawn about the origins of the problem causes and helps in selecting further analyses.

The ISTR, short for Initial Sample Test Report, is a form in which a supplier documents the results collected during the inspection of first articles. This is a central requirement from the customer. The aim is to ensure that the quality of the first articles, i.e., the products manufactured during the test run of a new series production, meets expectations and that the specifications have been realized. The ISTR includes, among other things, contact details and product and inspection information, a table of contents (e.g., core data, details about the equipment, and comments). The inspection results primarily include the inspection tools, target and actual values, and the customer’s decision.

Define is one of the five DMAIC phases in Six Sigma that a project must go through. In the Define phase, the problem statement is defined in a project charter.

The DMAIC roadmap is a structured approach in 5 phases for executing Lean Six Sigma projects. Its goal is to optimize an existing process.

The DMAIC roadmap is the most crucial success factor in Lean Six Sigma. The five phases build systematically upon each other and provide a clear guiding framework.

The Cause and Effect Matrix, also known as the C&E Matrix, is a tool from Lean Six Sigma used to represent and prioritize multiple influencing factors on a defect (effect).

In Six Sigma, CTQs (short for Critical-to-Quality) are understood as critical quality attributes necessary to achieve high-quality processes, products, or services that meet customer needs. CTQs are measurable characteristics that ensure customer satisfaction. To identify them, an analysis of the Voice of Customer (VoC) is required. This analysis helps identify customer requirements that are not inherently measurable, which are then translated into CTQs. EA useful tool for making these requirements measurable and specific is the CTQ tree, which represents customer desires as a tree diagram, allowing for a more precise categorization.