Meet Maheshwari

HIPPO is an acronym for "Highest Paid Person's Opinion". Yes it's still one of the biggest detergents to the use of data driven decesion making, infact according to an article published in Forbes magazine few months back it's one of the key barriers to more evidence - based data driven decision making. So what is HIPPO? HIPPO means taking decision based on the sole opinion of Highest Paid Person in the room. Why is it bad? Isn't he/she paid highest because he/she is an expert or most experienced? In this scenerio, decesions are made to please the senior most person instead of data driven decesions. Althought the organization might have good quality and quantity of data available but because the HIPPO wants to do something, decesions are made as per his/her choice, just to please him/her. These type of decesions can lead to catastrophic failures. Also the morale of team hits the bottom because their hardships in collecting/ sorting and analyzing data goes in vain.Thus personal opinions, even though based on experience or expertise shouldn't out weight data driven decesions . Instead expertise/ experience should be used to complement the decesions based on data I would end my answer with a quote " In God we trust, all others must bring data" - W. Edward Deming

Andon is basically an alert system. The term "Andon" is a Japanese word which translates to "Paper lantern". It refers to a system which can easily and quickly notify supervisors, maintenance team members, etc. It's part of Jidoka approach which empowers a non-managerial employee with the authority to stop a process to tackle quality issues. Andon system is mostly placed at the top part of a machine, so that it can be seen easily from any part of the shop floor and is generally integrated with a buzzer sound nowadays . Andon system can have different bright colors like red, orange, green etc where each color and tone of buzzer would have different message for the team. Andon can be activated manually by an operator (by using specific buttons) or it can automatically activated by the equipment (by using sensors) if there's a defect, safety issue, material shortage etc issues which needs immediate assistance. The line stays down untill the issues are corrected. Nowadays andons can have graphical images, text displays, SOS message to smart phones/ tablets of team members. Later these stops are documented and root cause analysis is carried out on the system to ensure these issues are not repeated.

Heijunka is a Japanese term and it can be broadly translated as 'Leveling". The main focus of Heijunka is to eliminate unevenness/ irregularities/ fluctuations (Mura). Lean emphasis on the concept of 1 piece flow, but it's easily said than done. This is where Heijunka comes in picture. Instead of 1 piece flow, heijunka takes average demand in consideration. The average demand should be of a fairly small period of time I.e 3days/ 1 week/ 10 days/ fortnight, etc. (Depending on lead time and other factors) Mostly firms don't work upon a single product but they work with a varied range of products. In this scenerio the Production/ Planning team should take average demand of each product for the specified time period. For example, if the firm get 9 orders per week for Product X, 4 orders for Product Y, 6 orders for Product Z on average, team need to level their capacity to produce a total number of 19 products per week. This way team can establish a stable flow of work and meet the average demand by end of the week, thus keeping your equipment utilised all the time and without overburden at the time of peak demand. Other benefits include reduced inventory, reduced WIP, better cash flow, etc.

I'll take the example of designing a new tyre Divergent- Now the team has to be creative and add maximum features that they can add into a tyre(Leave constraints of physics, material science, economics etc aside) For our tyre team can have ideas such as following 1. Colorful tyre for aesthetics 2. Tyre made of fibre for less weight 3. Tyre with spikes for better grip 4. Tyre that can inflate itself etc. Convergent - once the team is done with divergent thinking start thinking rationally, put constraints such as follows. 1. Will the customers show positive response with color change (can use results of some survey) 2. Will fibre glass infused tyres be safe? 3. Does the terrain requires tyres with spikes? 4. Is the self inflating technology reliable and affordable? Etc. Thus using divergent followed by convergent technique for designing a product can utilise the maximum creativity of the team as well as hell the team reach to laser point solutions for various customer needs.