The term yokoten refers to the sharing, learning and teaching of best practices laterally throughout an organization.  Yokoten is often referred to as "horizontal deployment" because practice of this principle requires various levels of an organization to share, innovate spread knowledge and or improve on kaizen in a cross functional manner.  A very important aspect of this critical principle is that individuals have an opportunity to exercise Genchi Genbutsu and gain consensus on improvements.  At times yokoten can include benchmarking, comparing and even borrowing from other improvements, but, in the truest sense yokoten should allow people to develop and grow as a result of sharing, learning and teaching.  

  PDCA or plan-do-check-act is a four step method used in lean, quality improvements and other continuous improvement strategies.  

  Design for Environment or DFE as it is often referred to as, is a design method which considers the safety, sustainability, health and environmental aspects of a service or a product in the initial phases of development and design.

  A setup is the work required to change a specific machine, resource, work center or line from making the last good piece of an item to making the first good piece of another item.  This includes the preparation and adjustments that are performed until the first good piece is processed.

• See also: Changeover.
• See also: Setup Time.

  The cause and effect diagram, fishbone diagram or Ishikawa diagram is a tool used to discover possible causes of an effect.