Terms around digital value stream, Lean management and AI in production — a reference for production teams, Lean experts and IT decision-makers.
Autonomous, AI-driven software components that monitor production data, detect deviations, and proactively issue recommendations or alerts to the people responsible.
A bottleneck is the station with the lowest capacity in a value stream; it determines the overall throughput of the system. The Theory of Constraints is the related management theory developed by Eliyahu M. Goldratt.
A systematic overview of all changeover times between different products or variants on a machine — showing which sequences are especially time-consuming or especially efficient.
The German equivalent of Kaizen — often organized as a structured company program for systematically capturing and implementing improvement suggestions.
The time required to complete one unit at a specific workstation or process step — measured from the start to the completion of the same operation on one unit.
A virtual representation of a real object, process or system that synchronizes with the original based on data and is used for analysis, simulation or prediction.
A digital twin of the real production flow, generated live from operational data, mapping material, information and time flows across all manufacturing stages.
Enterprise Resource Planning — a company-wide IT platform that integrates commercial and logistical processes: bills of materials, routings, orders, inventory, purchasing and finance.
A Japanese concept of continuous, incremental improvement — based on many small changes made by all employees rather than infrequent large-scale projects.
The total time an order or product spends in the production system from the start of processing to completion — including all waiting, queue and setup times.
A software category that combines Lean methodology with AI and data analytics to support continuous improvement in production with data.
A management philosophy rooted in the Toyota Production System that aims to eliminate waste, maximize value creation and institutionalize continuous improvement.
Manufacturing Execution System — an IT layer between ERP and the machine level that controls production orders, captures operational data and provides real-time transparency on production status.
Overall Equipment Effectiveness — a metric that measures overall equipment effectiveness as the product of availability, performance and quality, making productivity losses visible.
A Lean leadership methodology that anchors steering, problem-solving and continuous improvement where value is created — directly on the production floor.
The calculated target pace of production, calculated as available production time divided by customer demand in the same period — it dictates the rhythm at which production must occur.
The sum of all value-adding and non-value-adding activities a product goes through, from raw material sourcing to delivery to the customer.
The calculation of what-if scenarios on a digital value stream to make the effects of changes on lead time, inventory, bottlenecks and throughput visible before implementation.
In Lean Management, any activity that consumes resources but creates no value for the customer — classically divided into seven types of waste according to Taiichi Ohno.
All orders or materials currently in the production process — i.e. started but not yet completed.