Lean manufacturing
Lean, Kaizen, Jidoka, Six Sigma, the frameworks that define operational efficiency. Augos doesn't replace any of them. It supplies the one thing they all assume you already have: continuous, trustworthy measurement of what people do when a line stops.
How we support Lean
Lean is a culture of removing anything that doesn't add value, improved continuously by the people who do the work. Its methods are sound; their weak point has always been measurement. Gemba walks, stopwatch studies and workshop memory are periodic and manual, so improvements are hard to check and quietly erode. Augos is the measurement layer underneath, always on, event-level, owned by name, which is what lets each of these methods actually hold.
Lean itself rests on five steps that repeat: define value from the customer's side, map the value stream, make the work flow without stopping and starting, let demand pull it, and pursue perfection a little at a time. Augos does none of the mapping or the workshops; it measures the two wastes that are purely human, so the gains those steps chase can be measured rather than assumed.
Kaizen & continuous improvement
Kaizen runs on the Plan-Do-Check-Act loop. Most plants are good at Plan and Do and weak at Check, once the event ends and the facilitator leaves, measurement stops and the gain fades. Augos is the Check: because it measures every stop and operator continuously, an improvement can be checked against the line's own numbers the week after it's made and again a month later, without a manual study. That closes the loop and sustains the gain.
Eliminate waste
Lean names eight wastes, often remembered as TIMWOODS:
| Waste | What it is | Augos |
|---|---|---|
| Defects | Work scrapped or reworked. | Seen as quality loss |
| Overproduction | Making more, or sooner, than needed. | Not measured |
| Waiting | People or machines standing idle. | Core, the heart of downtime |
| Non-utilised talent | Skills and ideas going unused. | Core, via benchmarking |
| Transportation | Moving material further than needed. | Not measured |
| Inventory | Stock sitting between steps. | Not measured |
| Motion | Unnecessary movement at a station. | Not measured |
| Over-processing | Doing more than the customer values. | Not measured |
Two of the eight are almost entirely human, and they're the two Augos owns. Waiting is the heart of downtime, the minutes spent noticing, calling, and waiting for help or parts. Non-utilised talent is answered by benchmarking every operator against your own best. The rest are flow and layout problems Augos measures where it can, defects surface as quality loss, but doesn't claim to solve.
Jidoka & Andon
Jidoka is the principle of stopping the moment a problem appears rather than passing it down the line; Andon is the signal that calls for help when it does. A traditional andon raises the alarm but rarely measures the response. The Augos operator terminal is an andon that keeps counting after the pull, it captures the signal and times what happens next, turning a light that gets forgotten into a measured chain with an owner on every link.
Lean Six Sigma
Six Sigma attacks variation through DMAIC, define, measure, analyse, improve and control, and every stage after the first lives or dies on data. The hardest data to get on a shop floor has always been reliable, continuous measurement of stops and human response, exactly what Augos produces. It gives a Six Sigma programme a clean, event-level dataset to measure against. It also gives the evidence, run after run, that an improvement reduced variation rather than just looked good on the day.
Common questions
What are the eight wastes of Lean?
Defects, overproduction, waiting, non-utilised talent, transportation, inventory, motion and over-processing, remembered as TIMWOODS or DOWNTIME. Augos measures the two human ones, waiting and non-utilised talent, directly.
Is Lean the same as Six Sigma?
No. Lean removes waste and speeds flow; Six Sigma reduces variation and defects. They're often run together as Lean Six Sigma, and both depend on measurement, which is where Augos fits.
Does Augos replace our Lean or Kaizen programme?
No. Augos is the measurement layer under it. Your team keeps running the methods, and Augos measures every stop and the response to it, so each change can be checked.