It’s a growing trend in these United States: paying extra for conveniences such as bypassing the riffraff in airport security lines, or whizzing past mere mortal motorists on pristine, pay-for express lanes.

Nobody likes to be told they’re doing something wrong. But if you were doing something wrong due to a misunderstanding, and it was actually hindering your operations while adding unnecessary cost, wouldn’t you want to know?

The Japanese term, heijunka, also known as level-loading, production leveling, or production smoothing, facilitates system stability by addressing workload unevenness (mura) by leveling both volume and mix over time (see figure 1).