I got detailed and excellent feedback from a knowledgeable colleague in Japan that enhances the quality of this blog post. Did you enjoy this explanation? Then you probably will like this post about 5S too. Powell (Eds.), The Routledge Companion to Lean Management, Routledgeĭo you agree or disagree with my examination of muri, mura, muda? Please leave your comments below. Christoph Roser explains the origin of Muri, mura and muda: the three evils of manufacturing. Michel Baudin has several good posts about muri, mura, and muda.For the usual definition of the 3Ms, see LEI’s Lean Lexicon.Workplace management: Productivity Press. You must avoid muda, but remember the sequence of muri, mura, muda. Luckily, Taiichi Ohno has helped us describe what “fat horses” look like in factories: Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Overproduction, Over-processing, and Defects. Fat horses are waste and must be avoided, and you should certainly not just stand and stare at them. Note the very common Japanese word “dame” (駄目), which literally means to look (目) at fat horses and is usually translated to “no good” or “don’t do it”. You cannot use a fat horse, yet you must care for and feed it. The worst thing you could have was a fat horse. In the middle ages, horses were of vital importance in the Far East.
#MURI IKANJI PLUS#
The second kanji “da” (駄) consists of “horse” (馬) plus “fat” (太). As explained, “mu” (無) means something similar to “nothing”. Muda starts with the same kanji prefix as muri. It is common to translate muda (無駄) into useless, unnecessary, or waste. In a manufacturing setting, it is the second thing to reduce. Unevenness is the enemy of balance and stability. If you have mura in your process, you will get uneven output. Alternatively, it can be seen as a man (文) in the middle of two kings (王), which would symbolize that unevenness is a king-level issue that must be treated seriously. ? means two pieces of jades merged together and the 文 in the middle symbolizes a man that have cut them in two dissimilar pieces. There are at least two different interpretations of the kanji itself: It can be seen as a compound of two other kanjis, a simplified version of ? plus 文. It consists of only one symbol that means uneven. Mura (斑) starts with the same phonetic sound as muri and muda, but note that its kanji is completely different. Muri should be the first thing to reduce. Because overload will make the production break down, it is “totally unreasonable”. In a manufacturing factory, we translate “muri” into overburden of machines, people, and processes. Hence, muri means something that cannot be accepted. Putting “mu” before “ri”, you get “totally unreasonable”. The second kanji “ri” (理) illustrates the “king (王) of the village (里)”, which is best translated as “reason” or “correct”.
The first kanji “mu” (無) shows a fire that burns it means that nothing is left. Muri (無理) consists of two kanjis, which can be translated into “unreasonable” or “’impossible”. Please comment below if you have similar or alternative explanations of the 3 Ms. Toyota), Professor Hajime Mizuyama (Aoyama Gakuin University) and Doctoral Candidate Mieko Igarashi (NTNU) for discussing this post with me prior to publication. Thanks to Professor Masaru Nakano (Keio University, ex. The meaning of a Japanese word is not always related to the meaning of the original Chinese characters. Also, be aware that interpretations of kanjis differ and that I cannot guarantee that this interpretation is correct. Note that I have not seen this kanji-level explanation of muri, mura, and muda anywhere else before.
I was fascinated about what I learned, and would like to pass it on to my readers. To learn more about the deeper meaning of the 3 Ms, I sat down with Hugo Tschirky, Professor Emeritus at ETH Zurich and an expert in Japanese culture and management. Although this is an accurate translation of the meaning, there is more to it. The English translations of muri, mura, and muda as used in a manufacturing settings are well established as “overburden,” “unevenness,” and “waste”. To efficiently improve a process, muri should be attacked before mura, and mura before muda. In my field studies of lean in numerous factories around the world, I have learned that the sequence of the words matter. When Toyota developed the Toyota Production System, they learned early on that there are two other enemies of productivity muri and mura. Those that start waste-hunting lean projects will not achieve break-through improvements and will never build a culture of continuous improvement. The most common misunderstanding is to see lean only as a method to reduce waste (“muda”). The “3 Ms”- muri, mura, muda - is among the most important concepts in lean production.
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