Yamazumi Chart Explained

Yamazumi Chart Explained

When you know that a company or organization is applying the Line Balancing system, you can be sure that they are using the Yamazumi chart.

But what exactly is the Yamazumi chart and how does it help?

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Simply put, the Yamazumi chart is a diagram that allows you to immediately know when supply and demand are unbalanced. This way, organizations or companies have the ability to immediately rebalance the project to ensure that efficiency is always kept. Ultimately, the use of a Yamazumi chart is able to deliver immediate results for both the company as well as for the customer. ​

Yamazumi is a Japanese word that means to stack up and can b quite helpful to know when you should begin a Kaizen event. In addition, one of the things that you need to know is that each process task is represented in a stacked bar chart.
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Everything you need to know about the statistical process control charts. ​

A Yamazumi chart usually includes different categories: value added, not value added, and waste. The duration of each task is also annotated and displayed in the same bar chart. What makes the Yamazumi chart a different visual tool is the fact that each task within the process is stacked up so that you can have a better perspective of the entire process.

As you can see in the previous Yamazumi chart, the x-axis represents each process step and the y-axis represents the cycle time.

What is Kaizen and Kaizen Blitz?

Most Yamazumi charts include the same first red bar named Takt Time. Others may simply include a dotted line representing the Takt Time. Simply put, the Takt Time is the limit of time that your processes should take. Ideally, you should never have any process with a bar higher than the takt time bar. After all, this would mean that you would be producing a lot of waste and that the process could be improved in terms of cost and efficiency.

However, as you can imagine, the takt time can change throughout the processes as well as throughout time. So, when you are analyzing a Yamazumi chart, you will be able to discover if any of the processes is the bottleneck as well as if there is any process that you can improve.

​Why Should Organizations Use The Yamazumi Chart?

Organizations and companies are always looking to improve their results by decreasing their costs and, at the same time, by increasing their revenues. And the Yamazumi chart can be a good way to help you achieve both goals. After all, this tool allows you to know the processes that can be improved in terms of waste elimination as well as in terms of efficiency.  As a result, the more efficient the company or organization, the faster it will be to create output, quality output, leaving customers happy.

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Overall we can say that a Yamazumi chart is a very helpful tool to help companies and organizations to rebalance their processes whenever there is a change in the takt time. After all, the Yamazumi chart provides a great visual indication of:

• the operations that are overloaded (beyond the takt time)
• the operations that are underutilized
• the delays
• the wastage
• the blocks.