“All we are doing is looking at the time line; from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect cash. We are reducing that time line by removing the non-value-added wastes.” -Taiichi Ohno, Father of the Toyota Production System
As Taiichi Ohno explains in this statement above, Lean is about removing waste from processes. This is one of the fundamental principles of Lean. Being lean means systematically removing anything impeding the free flow of value to the receiving party. But what exactly is “waste”?
Waste can mean many different things to different people, but in Lean it has a very specific definition. In fact waste can be broken down to 7 simple elements called the “7 wastes”.
The 7 wastes are:
- Transportation
- Inventory
- Motion
- Waiting
- Overproduction
- Over processing
- Defects
Transportation- moving products and materials from one location to another. The very best you can hope for when transporting goods, material, and information from one place to another is that nothing goes wrong. Conveyance is a necessary evil to be reduced wherever possible, and the U.S. Postal Service is in decline because technology is helping us do just that (1). Examples in the office include emailing information from one person to another, carrying a file folder to the 5th floor for someone else look at, carrying a file to the filing cabinet in the hallway, etc.
Inventory- any material, product, or service that is waiting to be processed or used. Any time inventory builds up, it creates unhelpful pressure to reduce or eliminate it. A visit to the average car dealership — an experience many consider painful — is a case in point: the buildup of cars is the root cause of sales pressure and unfriendly consumer tactics (1). Examples in the office include: emails sitting in an inbox waiting to be read, a presentation waiting to be sent to the client, a job candidate waiting to receive a job offer, reams of copy paper on the shelf etc.
Motion- any movement including typing, clicking, twisting, turning, bending, reaching, and walking. Needless repetition of any process (even a lean one) takes time, productivity and cost. Even the best companies struggle with this. Last year, a large tech company wanted to buy 500 copies of the eBook version of Guy Kawasaki’s Enchantment, and the employee responsible for doing so tried Apple’s iTunes first. Apple’s instructions were to buy 500 gift cards, scratch off the back, and then enter individual codes one at a time into iTunes. At that point, the employee tried Amazon, where he ended up making 500 individual credit-card purchases. “This fried my brain,” Kawasaki says (1). Examples in the office include reaching to pick up a phone, dialing, filling out forms, lifting boxes, stapling, etc.
Waiting- a period of pause or delay. Tom Petty had it right: the waiting is the hardest part. Whether it’s an endless, unmoving queue, being stuck in idle while you wait for an approval to proceed, or simply a slow connection speed, we’ve all experienced waiting and the accompanying sense of helplessness and lost productivity. Both MinuteClinic and WellnessMartMD have eliminated the dreaded healthcare waiting room by minimizing procedures to those that are quick and easy to handle (1). Examples in the office include waiting for approval from a manager, waiting for a computer to unfreeze, waiting to find a match to a job, etc.
Overproduction- producing more than is needed by the customer. Anything done without regard to demand counts as overproduction. That includes something as simple as processing an order before it’s actually needed. Uber, a just-in-time limousine service that doesn’t take advance reservations, has successfully excised this waste (1). Examples in the office include filling out paperwork that is not needed, replying to all when you only need to reply to one person, providing information that is not needed, etc.
Over processing- doing more than is necessary. When there are too many non-value-added steps to achieve a given outcome, you’ve got overprocessing. Examples include too many operations to complete a phase of work, the effort needed to inspect and fix defects arising from poor tool or product design, and redundant data entry due to a lack of integration between multiple systems. Amazon banished overprocessing with the “1-Click” innovation (1). Examples in the office include re-doing something because it was done incorrectly the first time, printing a document so you can scan it back into the computer as a pdf, etc.
Defects- products or services that are broken or do not meet the needs of the customer. Everyone has experienced a defect of some kind: errors, inaccurate or incomplete information or flawed products. It’s obviously important to reduce the probability of these things happening. Surprisingly, however, it’s not always a top priority. According to a 2010 survey from the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, one in every seven Medicare patients in hospitals is subjected to a serious medical mistake, contributing to the deaths of an estimated 180,000 people a year. Of those, roughly 80,000 were caused by errors that could have been caught and prevented, with the simplest of methods — standardized checklists like those used by every airplane pilot — as surgeon/author Atul Gawande points out in his book The Checklist Manifesto (1). Examples in the office include typos, incorrect information, incorrect reports, boring training classes, etc.
There is an acronym to help you remember what the 7 wastes are. It is TIMWOOD:
- Transportation
- Inventory
- Motion
- Waiting
- Overproduction
- Over processing
- Defects
When applying lean, you start with examining the process from the customer’s perspective. This first question is always “What does the customer want from this process?” (Both the internal customer at the next steps in the production line and the final, external customer.) This defines value. Through a customer’s eyes, you can observe a process and separate the value-added steps from the non-value-added steps.
Ohno Circle- Watch and Think for Yourself
Taiichi Ohno spent a great deal of time on the shop floor at Toyota, learning to map the activities that added value to the product and getting rid of non-value-adding wastes. There are many stories about the famous Ohno circle. In his book “The Toyota Way”, Jeffrey Liker recounts an interview where he was able to speak in person with Teruyuki Minoura, who at the time was president of Toyota Motor Manufacturing, North America. He learned lean directly from the master and part of his early education at Toyota was standing in a circle:
Minoura: Mr. Ohno wanted us to draw a circle on the floor of a plant and then we were told, ‘Stand in that and watch the process and think for yourself,’ and then he didn’t even give you any hint of what to watch for. This is the real essence of lean.
Liker: How long did you stand in the circle?
Minoura: Eight hours!
Liker: Eight hours?!
Minoura: In the morning Mr. Ohno came to request that I stay in the circle until supper and after that Mr. Ohno came to check and ask me what I was seeing. And of course, I answered, “There were so many problems in the process….” But Mr. Ohno didn’t hear. He was just looking.
Liker: And what happened at the end of the day?
Minoura: It was near dinner time. He came to see me. He didn’t take any time to give any feedback. He just said gently, “Go home”.
Of course it is difficult to imagine this training happening in a U.S. factory. Most young engineers would be irritated if you told them to draw a circle and stand for 30 minutes, let alone all day. But Minoura understood this was an important lesson as well as an honor to be taught in this way by the master of lean. What exactly was Ohno teaching? The power of deep observation. He was teaching Minoura to think for himself about what he was seeing, that is, to question, analyze, and evaluate.
Perfection is extremely rare, which means there is waste in every process. Leaders should watch a process to find wastes that if removed will provide a process that is easier to execute and deliver a more perfect service or product. It’s a simple activity that doesn’t require a graduate degree or numberless years of experience. Simply block out time, watch and create an action plan for improvement. Teams can take a time out together from the daily grind to select a process to watch. Those who do the activity or task should be given time to experiment with their ideas for making the process better. This can engage each of the team members and provide a way for the team to work together providing better services or products to their customers.
1-It’s Time to Wage an All-Out War on Waste, Matthew E. May
Individual Kaizen
“Kaizen” is a compound Japanese word. “Kai” is translated to change, while “Zen” means to make good or make better. Kaizen grows out of the famous Toyota Production System where the focus is on engaging employees in ongoing, small, continuous improvements.
When you look for, and eliminate, the seven wastes from your process you are changing the process to make it better. This is called an individual kaizen. In fact, the easiest and best way to practice kaizen is to do it yourself. These will typically be small incremental improvements that are quick and easy to implement. These type of improvements usually don’t have huge results or make a big improvement to our business. Over time, however, as more and more individual kaizens are completed the cumulative results can be enormous. There is a lot of power in this principle, and this is the best, easiest, and fastest way for a company to do continuous improvements and always stay ahead of competitors.
How the CIU continuous improvement system comes together
As you hopefully recall from what you have learned about lean, achieving good quality is built on a foundation of standard work and kaizen.
You first bring order and stability by organizing the process and establishing standard work. You then ensure quality is built into the process. Last, you improve the process by eliminating waste and continuing to improve quality. The cycle looks as follows:
As you follow this cycle, it will help you reach the goals of 1) highest quality, 2) shortest lead time, and 3) lowest cost. Once you use individual kaizen to eliminate waste from the process, the new process becomes the new standard work and the cycle repeats itself. What wastes will you eliminate from your process today?