7 WASTES IN YOUR ORGANIZATION (For non-experts in improvement & Quality Mgt)

You know, it just occured to me that we often use all these quality jargons to scare interested people thinking Quality Management, Six Sigma, Lean and its cohorts (oops!) are all only about statistics and technical stuffs. No! - Truth is, at the core of Lean, SS etc is IMPROVEMENT.. Oh Yes! CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT - so you are definitely a Lean/SS person IF you seek to improve things (certifications dont matter - the key is having the interest backed up with some capability to improve things - oops! sorry my certified mates). So let me let you start from your organization. Very simple exercise: IDENTIFY THE 7 WASTES(muda) below IN YOUR ORGANIZATION, then select a small team of not more than 3-4 people from different departments (thats what is called cross functional team) to brainstorm (thats called Kaizen) on alternative better and cheaper ways of performing the affected processes - Vuala.

(1) OVERPROCESSING:

Adding value to a service/product more that a customer is willing to pay for. e.g. Too much toppings/value added to the customer

(2) TRANSPORTATION:

Unnecessary movement of materials, information or product. e.g. Moving mundane documents to the archive instead of outright destruction. e.g. Transporting materials to offsite warehouse for future use instead of implementing JIT/straight through processing.

(3) MOTION:

Needless movement of people e.g. situating a printer in an unreasonable place or floor warranting people to walk long distances to make copies. e.g. situating a key department in an off route location warranting movement of other departments to them for approvals, processsing etc

(4) WAITING:

Delays between the end of one process and the beginning of the next. e.g. delays in approval, e.g. understaffing/overstafing of functions leading to over efficiency and underperformance of cluster processes

(5) INVENTORY:

Keeping excess stocks or work in progress in excess of what is required. e.g. Keeping excess office consumables. e.g. E-Biz products

(6) DEFECTS:

Services not conforming to what customers request for. e.g. production errors, transactional mistakes

(7) OVERPRODUCTION:

Services/products over what is required for immediate use. e.g. Mass production of cards for customers without request leading to refusal/failure to pick up the cards. e.g.

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Best of luck.

Your Friend
Titus