3M In Lean Manufacturing – Muri

Muri is a Japanese term meaning “overload, unreasonable, beyond one’s ability”.

Muri is deeply intertwined with the other two M letters, Muda and Mura. Mura (uneven) results in alternating between being overloaded with work and having nothing to do. Multiple Muda – Overproduction, Overhandling, Movement and Transportation – unnecessarily increases workload. Muri can also cause Muda.

It can be seen that when you want to find the cause of inefficiencies in production activities, you should check your processes because it is likely that all three of these things are “working” during operation. .

By examining the entire operating process and taking the 3M model into account, you will be able to conduct effective diagnostics of your operations. Once you have identified Muda, Mura, and Muri in the processes, it’s time to address them directly. There are many Lean tools you can explore to manage 3M presence in your processes such as 5S, Just-In-Time (JIT), Kanban and Heijunka.

In the next sections we will learn more about Lean tools!