Daily management words, in plain English

Concern, Cause, Countermeasure: a short write-up of a problem, done the day it happens. What happened, why it happened, and what's being done about it, by whom and by when.

In ShopBoard: A supervisor or manager escalates a logged issue to a 3C, which has fields for Concern, Cause, Countermeasure and a due date. Saving a countermeasure with a due date puts it on the Actions list. Mark Complete closes the 3C and resolves the issue. Operators can log issues and read 3Cs but can't escalate them or save changes to them.

Ask why the problem happened, then why that happened, and keep going until you reach something you can change this week that would have stopped it. Five is a reminder that the first answer is rarely the root, not a rule.

In ShopBoard: The A3's Root Cause Analysis holds one or more 5-Why chains, each ending in a root-cause line. Send to 5-Why starts a chain from a fishbone cause, and the page suggests one chain per confirmed cause. On Professional and up, once a chain is filled in, Check my 5-Why asks the AI coach to look for gaps in the logic.

A one-page problem-solving report, named after the A3 paper size (roughly 11x17) it was first done on. It's for the problem a quick 3C didn't fix: background, current condition, goal, root cause, countermeasures, plan and follow-up, worked through in that order.

In ShopBoard: A supervisor or manager escalates a 3C that didn't hold to an A3, or starts one directly with Ad Hoc A3 on the Issues page or from a part's row on the scrap Pareto. It has seven sections: Background, Current Condition, Goals / Targets, Root Cause Analysis (fishbone and 5-Why), Countermeasures, Implementation Plan, and Follow-up & Verification. An escalated 3C's cause and countermeasure carry over. Status runs draft, in review, approved, closed, and the A3 exports to PDF or PowerPoint.

A signal, usually a light or a cord at the station, that an operator uses to call for help the moment something goes wrong, so the problem gets attention while it's still happening.

What you do right now to stop a problem spreading while you look for the cause: put the lot on hold, sort the parts, add a 100% check. It stops the bleeding. It isn't the fix.

In ShopBoard: There's no separate containment field. The notes box on the board's quick issue form prompts 'What happened? Immediate containment?', and on Professional and up the A3's countermeasure coach asks whether the plan has both containment and a permanent fix.

The specific change that stops a problem coming back, with an owner and a date. "Retrain the operator" isn't one. A fixture that only loads one way, a gauge at the machine or a changed setup sheet is.

In ShopBoard: A 3C countermeasure with a due date goes onto the Actions list. There it gets an assignee and a status (not started, in progress, complete, blocked), and late items show as overdue. An A3 has a countermeasures table with an owner on each row, and its implementation tasks sync to the same list. Operators see only the actions assigned to them.

The running total of actual minus plan, shift to date. One short hour is noise. A gap that grows every hour is a decision: overtime, extra help, or a call to the next cell.

In ShopBoard: The hour-by-hour's Cumulative Δ row adds up actual minus plan for every hour that has started and has an actual, shown as +N in green or -N in red.

How long one part actually takes at a station, start to finish. When the part number changes, so does the cycle time, and so should the plan for that hour.

In ShopBoard: The hour-by-hour plan can be different for every hour, so an hour running a slower part gets a lower plan. ShopBoard doesn't store cycle times per part.

Looking at the same few numbers every day, at the board, and doing something about the red ones: an owner, a cause, a countermeasure, a date. The board is the easy part. The habit is the system.

In ShopBoard: That's the whole product: a board for each cell, a department board and a facility board. Problems go from issue to 3C to A3, and countermeasures are tracked on the Actions list.

Moving a problem up to people who can fix it when the cell can't: from the tier 1 board to tier 2, or from a quick 3C to a full A3. A written rule, like the third 3C on the same concern in 30 days, beats a judgment call.

In ShopBoard: Supervisors and managers move an issue to a 3C, then to an A3, with one button. ShopBoard doesn't escalate on its own. When a supervisor or manager links a repeat issue, its count goes up (shown as ×2, ×3), and a person decides when it goes up a level.

The share of parts that went through right the first time, with no rework, no touch-up and no second inspection: good-first-time pieces divided by pieces started. Unlike scrap rate, it counts the parts that got fixed.

In ShopBoard: The Q letter on every cell is first-pass yield, typed in as a percent against the cell's quality target (98% by default). It's green at target, yellow within 10% of target and red below that. ShopBoard doesn't work it out from started, scrapped and reworked counts; someone types in the percent.

A diagram that sorts possible causes onto bones by type: people, machine, method, material, measurement and environment. It keeps the team from locking onto the first cause someone names.

In ShopBoard: The A3's Root Cause Analysis opens with an Ishikawa diagram on six bones: Man, Machine, Method, Material, Measurement and Environment. Each cause is marked Suspected, Confirmed or Ruled out (Suspected by default), and any cause can be sent to its own 5-Why chain.

Japanese for "the real place": the floor where the work happens. Going to the gemba means looking at the machine, the part and the board yourself before deciding anything from an office.

A grid with one row per hour of the shift: plan, actual and the running gap, filled in as each hour ends. It shows the shift slipping while there's still time to recover, not at the end of the day.

In ShopBoard: Each cell has a Plan row, an Actual row and a Cumulative Δ row for every hour of the shift. Anyone signed in clicks an hour that has started and types the actual. The hour goes green at or above plan, yellow from 90% and red below 90%. Supervisors and managers can save a default plan for each hour, and Apply Schedule fills it into the day. There's no reason-code or initials column.

A written routine for supervisors and managers: what to check, where and when, every day. It keeps the daily look from depending on who's in that day or what landed in the inbox overnight.

An injury that didn't happen this time: the forklift that braked hard, the guard found open, the part that slid off a pallet and missed a foot. They happen every week, not three times a year, so they show you where next quarter's injury is coming from.

In ShopBoard: Log it as a Safety issue from the cell board's S card or the Issues page. It stays in the cell's open issues until it's closed, and it can go to a 3C. There's no near-miss counter: the S letter counts incidents and turns red on anything above zero.

Overall equipment effectiveness: availability times performance times quality, or how much of a machine's scheduled time turned into good parts. It earns its place in a weekly or plant review. On a cell board it's too much math to act on.

In ShopBoard: ShopBoard doesn't calculate OEE. It has no machine run-time data, and Delivery is schedule attainment, a percent typed in against the cell's target.

A bar chart that ranks causes from biggest to smallest, with a running-total line. On most floors a few parts or reasons carry most of the cost, and the Pareto tells you which one to work first. Sort by dollars, not pieces.

In ShopBoard: The scrap page's Analysis tab ranks scrap dollars by reason category and by part number (top 10), each with a cumulative % line. Click a reason to see the parts behind it, and a supervisor or manager can start an A3 from a part's row. Pick this week, this month, this quarter or year to date, and narrow it to a department or a cell. Metrics also ranks issues by how often they've come back.

Plan, Do, Check, Act: try a fix, check whether it worked, then keep it or try again. Check is the step that gets skipped, and it's the one that tells you the fix held.

In ShopBoard: ShopBoard doesn't use the PDCA label, but the A3 follows the loop. Its Implementation Plan lists tasks with owners, dates and status. Follow-up & Verification holds review checkpoints with dates and notes, and once the first task is marked complete, a before-and-after chart of the cell's metric for that category.

A defect that got past you and reached the customer. The bad part is the cheap part of the bill. The sorting, the investigation, the expedited freight and the next order that goes somewhere else cost more.

A short code for why something went wrong, like a scrapped part or a missed hour, picked from a list of about eight posted at the board. A code you can tally after two weeks beats a sentence you can't.

In ShopBoard: Each scrap entry can take one of seven reason categories (Operator, Machine, Tooling, Material, Method, Measurement, Incoming) plus a free-text reason, and the Pareto ranks them by dollars. The list is fixed, and the hour-by-hour has no reason-code column.

An injury serious enough to go on the OSHA log, beyond first aid. It's the number the regulator wants, but it moves too rarely to run a daily board on.

In ShopBoard: The S letter counts safety incidents per cell per day: zero is green, anything else is red. ShopBoard doesn't keep an OSHA log.

Fixing a bad part so it can ship instead of scrapping it. It saves the part, but it costs operator and inspector time, and nobody sees that cost unless someone writes it down.

In ShopBoard: A scrap entry can be marked as including rework, with hours and a labor rate, and the scrap log totals rework cost next to scrap cost. Rework doesn't change the Q letter by itself.

The thing in the process that let the problem happen, and that you can change. If the answer is a person's name, keep asking: would a different, competent person on that machine have done the same?

In ShopBoard: The 3C has a Cause field. The A3 has a full Root Cause Analysis section with a fishbone and 5-Why chains. On Professional and up, the AI coach on the 3C's Cause field is set up to steer a cause that names a person back to the process.

Good parts made divided by parts planned, for the day or the shift. It's the D on most SQDC boards.

In ShopBoard: The D letter is schedule attainment, typed in as a percent against the cell's delivery target (95% by default). It isn't filled in from the hour-by-hour.

The call on what happens to a bad part: scrap it, rework it, send it back to the supplier, or use it as-is. Writing it down is how you find out what the bad part really cost.

In ShopBoard: Every scrap entry has a disposition: Scrapped, Rework, Return to Supplier, Use As-Is or Pending. Pending is the default, and a manager can change the default in Settings. The scrap log filters by disposition.

Pieces scrapped divided by pieces started. It ties straight to money, but it can't see rework: a part that got fixed and dropped in the good bin never shows up.

In ShopBoard: ShopBoard counts scrapped pieces and dollars, not a scrap rate. It doesn't record pieces started, so there's no percent. The C letter shows each day's scrap units and value from the scrap log.

The few minutes where one shift tells the next what it's walking into: where the cell stands against plan, what's on hold, what broke and what's still open. It's written down, so it doesn't depend on catching the right person in the aisle.

In ShopBoard: A cell with more than one shift gets a tab per shift on its board, next to today's hour-by-hour and the cell's open issues. There's no handover form or sign-off.

Safety, Quality, Delivery and Cost: the four things that decide whether a shift went well. An SQDC board puts all four in front of the team every day, one box each, green when on target and red when not.

In ShopBoard: Every cell has the four letters, each with its own month calendar, colored green, yellow or red. S counts incidents: zero is green, anything else is red. Q is first-pass yield and D is schedule attainment, both typed in as a percent against the cell's targets (98% and 95% by default): green at target, yellow from 90% of target, red below that. C is the day's scrap dollars from the scrap log: green at $0, yellow up to $500, red above that. The four measures are fixed; there are no custom metrics.

The pace demand sets: available production time divided by the parts the customer needs. 27,000 seconds of run time for 450 parts is a 60-second takt. It's not how fast the machine can go; that's cycle time.

In ShopBoard: Each cell stores a takt time in seconds, set when you create the cell (60 by default) and changeable in Settings. It's a reference number only: the hour-by-hour plan is typed for each hour or saved as a default schedule, not worked out from takt.

The first huddle of the day, run by a cell or team at its own board, in about 10 minutes at the start of the shift. Safety first, then yesterday's red boxes, today's plan and the open problems. Anything the cell can't fix goes up to tier 2.

In ShopBoard: Run it off the cell board: the four SQDC letters with a month calendar for each, today's hour-by-hour and the cell's open issues on one page, at a desk or on the cell's TV in Wall view. ShopBoard has no meeting timer or agenda; the board holds what the meeting reads.

The next huddle up, held after the tier 1 meetings: supervisors plus maintenance, quality and planning, usually with the plant manager, standing at one board. Each supervisor brings only the red items that need help from outside the cell. A big plant runs one per area; in a small shop it's the plant meeting.

In ShopBoard: The department board shows each cell's S, Q, D and C for the day, its open-issue count and a small hour-by-hour bar chart, plus the department's open issues, and it goes on a TV in Wall view. The facility board shows every department's cells with today's SQDC status and plant-wide counts of open issues, issues at 3C and issues at A3.

The plant leadership level: the plant manager and department heads working on what tier 2 couldn't close, and looking at trends across the plant. Smaller shops often fold it into tier 2.

In ShopBoard: The facility board is the plant view: every department's cells with today's SQDC status, plus counts of open issues, issues at 3C and issues at A3 that open into lists. Metrics adds SQDC trends by week, month, quarter and year, and the monthly report prints or saves as PDF.

Setting up the floor so anyone can tell at a glance whether things are on plan, without asking or reading a report. A red box means someone has to act.

In ShopBoard: Every SQDC letter, calendar day and hour-by-hour slot is green, yellow or red (Safety is only ever green or red). Wall view puts a cell or department board on a floor TV with big numbers and a header saying how many metrics are off target.