Two Tales of Waste and a Good Question

Lean identifies 7 basic types of waste:

Overproduction
Delays
Transport
Process Waste
Inventories
Motion
Defective Products

Here are 2 stories I heard recently heard about waste. Both people felt their business' processes were too slow. Each of the statements below highlight particular wastes and call for the use of the universal question "why?". 

"My company could really use Lean because we do alot of paper work by hand and it often gets sent back for small mistakes - we need a computer! People don't want to change from the old ways, they think it helps them keep their job."

"Our production control computer went down for a day and our productivity went up 25%, because we could just go ahead and move product without waiting!"

The people who said these things to me are capable and intelligent and good at what they do. They are interested and willing to be part of the solution but the culture of their workplaces does not allow this to happen. Unfortunately they work in places that do not make the best use of employees' talents ( the 8th waste in Lean is the waste of human potential).

In the first instance the assumption that a computer is needed may be true BUT it sounds like a better system is needed too. The existing methods clearly are too bureaucratic and time consuming, exemplifying the waste of Delay. Automating a bad system is not the answer to a bad system. The process owner needs to use lean thinking and ask "why?" Something like "why does it take too long to remove items from inventory?" or "why do 25% of requisitions get rejected?". Wastes like this are often ignored by people because they are so darn common that we learn to work around them, and learn think of them as part of the furniture.  Well if you are getting comments like this one - you'd better start rearranging that furniture!

Now the second comment is correct in an obvious way.  In many cases there is no doubt that more product can be moved if there are no constraints on the producer.  BUT  overproduction is a waste (producing more than is needed by the customer).  Lean thinking also tell us that inventories are a waste. Although it may be very satisfying to know your production team can bury the next process (your customer) it is not very effective in adding value. Why is there overproduction at certain steps of your process?  Is it your reward structure that makes one team pile up huge inventories? Is it the old style of doing long production batches and creating "economy of scale"?  Being Lean means giving the customer what they want when they want it. This is not done by holding costly inventories, but by having more capable and flexible processes.  Balancing the flow of product to meet the customer demand (pull) is a key lean tactic or countermeasure.

If your organization has "gatekeepers" that slow down your business, or processes that run far ahead of their customer's pull, then you need to ask  "why?" Evaluate the 8 wastes in your processes and get Lean! Train and empower your teams to implement root cause solutions in their own areas of responsibility.    Continuous improvement is as simple as identifying a waste and asking "why?". Get started. Your competitor has.

Greg

find some interesting reading here
http://astore.amazon.com/leabusforallastore-20/