The 8 Deadly Wastes

The customer defines value for any product or service.  If they aren’t willing to pay for something, it has no value to them. In the terminology of Lean, anything that doesn’t directly provide value to the customer is called “waste”. Further, there are eight specific types of waste. Once you know what they are, you can begin to spot them, and then work diligently to reduce or eliminate them. If you do, the customer experience will be improved and so will your operating results.

These are the eight deadly wastes:

Transportation
The movement of anything from place to place is considered waste, because it adds no value to the product or service being provided. It only adds time, and the potential for loss or damage. It may seem necessary to move things around in a process – putting things in trucks, putting things away on shelves, sending electronic data from one server to the next, but there is no change to the form or function of the thing being produced. The question to ask is, “how can we reduce or eliminate transportation in the process?”

Inventory
Ideally, the only product you should produce is the product that your customer wants; no more, no less.  More production creates inventory. Less production creates a shortage. The risk of having too much inventory is that it may spoil, become obsolete, or never leave the shelf. Think about computer chips. Once the new version of computer chip comes out, who is buying the older version? Typically, nobody, or if they do, they are receiving a sizable discount.  Another problem with inventory is that the thing you need may get lost behind the thing you don’t need. So, you end up producing more inventory that can hide the next thing, and the cycle continues.

Motion
This waste addresses the effort required to complete a task. If you must reach over your head, or grab something from the ground, you are using extra motion. If you must go away from your area to track something down and retrieve something, you are using extra motion. Ergonomics, which is the study of people’s efficiency in their work environment, is a method to identify and reduce excess motion.

Waiting
Time lost while waiting for an answer, a return email, an earlier process step, booting up your computer, or general waiting around is considered waste. It can be frustrating, time consuming and adds to the overall time in the process, which delays delivery to the customer. The key is to find the things that force you to wait and strive to eliminate them. Empowering people to make decisions is a quick way to drive waiting time down.

Overproduction
Have you ever noticed people who print out every email that they receive? This is an example of overproduction. How about a production line that is running really well and the managers want to keep things running? While the current product gets produced, the next product waits. There is a risk there will be a shortage of the raw materials to make the next product, or that there will be a delay in shipping the next product to the customer.

Overprocessing
This waste refers to the complexity in the process. If there are more steps than needed, or if the product or service is delivering beyond the requirements of the customer, this can be thought of as overprocessing. In the 1930’s, there was a cartoonist named Rube Goldberg, who devised the most complex ways of completing simple tasks. It was entertaining and creative, but not the ideal way of accomplishing work.

Defects
When the product or service doesn’t deliver to the required level of quality, this is considered a defect. When something has to be reworked, this is considered a defect. Many companies try to instill a culture of “Doing it right the first time.” They want to ensure that each process step will continue adding value to the benefit of the customer.

Unused Employee Creativity
The people who do the work generally have ideas to make their work simpler and safer. The best companies listen to their employees to get improvement ideas. Other companies think they know all of the answers and ignore suggestions by their employees. We don’t want people to shut their minds off when they come through the door, or we will be responsible for the worst waste of all.

In order to reduce or eliminate waste, you must be able to identify it. These eight wastes are easy to find in any process, if you are willing to look. If you make it a habit to reduce or eliminate these wastes, your customers will benefit. If your customers benefit, so will you.