Did you know that there are 8 types of waste commonly found in processes?
By identifying and understanding these types of waste, you can significantly improve the efficiency and effectiveness of your operations.
These wastes aren’t just found in manufacturing businesses. They can be found in all types of industries, organisations and operations. Any process can contain waste. I’ve even applied these principles to parts of my personal life to make my day to day processes easier!
To improve the efficiency of business operations, it’s important that everyone in the organisation is aware of these 8 types of waste and works towards identifying and eliminating them. Whether you are in management or on the shop floor, everyone has a role to play in keeping an eye out for waste and continuously improving the way things are done.
The more you reduce these wastes in your proceses, the more you will create a highly productive and efficient organisation, while also improving your profit margins.
By being relentless about reducing waste, you can demonstrate to your customers that you are focused on eliminating non-value-adding activities (which they don’t want to have to pay for!) which can help to justify prices and increase sales.
The 8 wastes are:
- Defects
- Waiting
- Motion
- Non-utilised talent
- Transportation
- Overproduction
- Inventory
- Extra-processing
Defects – Wasted effort addressing errors, mistakes, rework, scrap, and incorrect information.
Waiting – Time wasted waiting before starting the next process step, for example, waiting for information from someone or waiting for equipment to finish an operation while standing around.
Motion – When people have to move more than needed for example extra walking or reaching.
Non-utilised talent – Not making full use of your team’s talents, skills and knowledge.
Transportation – Moving product and materials more than is needed.
Overproduction – Producing more than is required or before it is needed.
Inventory – Having more materials, products and information than is needed or can be processed.
Extra-processing – Providing more than is required or at a higher quality than is needed where it doesn’t add value.
Which of these wastes do you see most in business?
I hope this post helps you to see processes in a new way and leads to you findings ways to improve your business.
If you need some help to evaluate your business operations and reduce these wastes, feel free to send me a message.
Good luck on your waste reduction journey!