Waste Reduction
Reduction of Waste
Based on our experiences, at present the development of cost effectiveness and the decrease or elimination of waste are among the main goals of companies. Talking about the manufacturing, office or the service provider sectors, we offer Toyota's method, lean management for achieving these goals, which we integrate with our 25-year change management/organization development experience.
Lean's answer for the challenges: continuously study and analyze your processes, and involve the employees in the elimination of waste! This continuous improvement, development should become integrated into daily operation!
The 8 Types of Waste According to Lean Management
- Overproduction - producing such products or services that the next user (external or internal customer) does not need. Result: a pile of documents, storing and sharing unimportant information (in an office environment), and/or overstaffing of products, excess inventory (at manufacturing companies).
- Waiting (time on hand) - workers serving to watch an automated machine or having to stand around waiting for the next processing step, or just plain having to wait because of stockouts, equipment downtime or capacity bottlenecks. This type of waste also includes delays in the office routine when there is need for a decision, consideration, passing on documents, or waiting for missing information. When these occur, the customer cannot be ideally served.
- Unnecessary transport or conveyance - carrying work in process (WIP) or office documents to the next step, or moving materials into or out of storage. This prolongs the work process and requires additional work force.
- Overprocessing or incorrect processing - taking unneeded steps due to poor tool and product design. It also creates waste if you provide higher-quality products or provide a more detailed, different or higher quality analysis than required by the customer.
- Excess inventory - excess raw material, WIP or finished goods causing excess storage, depreciation, obsolescence and damaged goods. It increases lead times, transportation and storage costs, and occasionally having to move the stocks, since - according to Murphy's law - always the innermost materials are needed. Also, extra inventory hides problems such as late deliveries from suppliers, equipment downtime, long setup times, production imbalances and defects. In office environment: reports used by nobody, finding and providing unnecessary information, parallel work on the same tasks.
- Unnecessary movement - comings and goings, searching for things, remote containers, uncomfortable work due to non-ergonomic workstations. In offices: the value-added work has to be stopped because of missing information, dossiers and you need to go to the other ofice or registry.
- Defects - production of scrap or correction; repair or rework. Excess searching because of missing or incorrect data and information; correcting the consequences of making mistaken decisions based on these - all take time and attention from value-added work.
- Unused employee creativity - losing learning and improvement opportunities by not engaging your employees or not listening to their ideas although they would have many.
For putting the principles of waste reduction and continuous improvement into practice, please go to Lean (TPS) Process!