MURI, MUDA, and MURA

Over the years, as Toyota Car Manufacturing Company continued to search for the best ways to improve their production process while ensuring exceptional quality for all their vehicles, they were able to employ the services of product quality gurus such as Dr. Shigeo Shingo and Mr. Taichi Ohno. Both of this men, are known as the pioneers of Toyota’s core manufacturing practices today and during their time working, they came up with several management concepts including Muri, Muda and Mura. Furthermore, their work led to what is not known as Lean Product Manufacturing System.

The three concepts, Muri, Muda, and Mura, are all based on Japanese words. Each of these will be explained briefly in the next few paragraphs.

MURI – is a Japanese word that stands for unreasonable, overburden or absurdity. Muri was adopted by Toyota Car Company to eliminate unreasonable waste from their production process in order to increase profitability. In a lot of ways, MURI is similar to its counterparts but can easily be distinguished.

MURI is based on the belief that “excessive strains put on the development processes and teams are most likely to result in unrealistic outcomes with limited time”. When a situation such as this arises, then it is most likely to be due to inadequate skills, poor planning, under estimation and poor task schedules. So, how can this kind of events are avoided during production? The answer is simple: plan the manufacturing process well; prioritise activities, understand the process variables such as time, resources, and skill levels of workers; ensure estimation is done correctly etc. Furthermore, it may help to know the organisation’s market base which may be useful in sorting out a number of the issues mentioned earlier; like knowing resources and time required.

MUDA - is used to describe activities that are wasteful and do not add value, productivity, or useful to a production practice or other business set ups. In a manufacturing company, this may occur as a result of multiple check-ins and unnecessary testing. The main causes of these time and resource wasting activities are mostly: lack of communication, inefficient resources or not understanding the requirements of the customer specs. This means, if a process is to be effective, then every activity must be properly documented; communication must be adequate; and customers’ need must be understood as much as possible.

MURA – In companies such as Toyota, waste reduction is used to effectively improve productivity in order to increase profitability. If, in a production process a standard procedure is not followed, there’s the tendency for different results to be generated for a single activity. For example, if 8 different people test a process or product, with no standard procedures to follow, the result will be 8 distinct results for the same test. However, if there was a standard procedure, policies, or requirements in place for such test, then there’s the likelihood that each test will turn out with the same result for each individual.

What this means is that, for waste and time to be limited in a production process, there is the need to ensure there’s a standard practice for each step.

In conclusion, when all three concepts, MURI, MUDA, and MURA, are combine in a manufacturing process, it can be a proven success as it is the case with Toyota Car Company.