7 Wastes of lean – How to eliminate all non-value-

added activities?
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Tags: project tracker kaizen lean production

Categories: Lean & Agile
Author
Blaz Kos
Date
04/11/2020

Every process in business either adds value or creates waste when goods or
services are being produced.

The main idea of “lean production” is about highlighting the things that
add value by reducing everything else (waste).
As a proven consequence, when you eliminate waste, the quality of
products improves, while production time and costs are reduced.

What you will find out in this article

What is considered as waste in lean production?

What are the “7 wastes of lean”?
1. Transportation – Don’t unnecessarily move products or materials
2. Inventory – All the access products and material that are not being
processed
3. Motion - All movement of equipment not done in the easiest possible
way
4. Waiting – idle production time where processes are not optimally
synchronized
5. Overprocessing – Investing more into a product than customer values
6. Overproduction – the waste of making too much too soon
7. Defects – mistakes and errors that take time to fix
Other types of waste
Underutilization
Waste of resources and materials
Easy steps to eliminate all 7 wastes of lean

In lean production or, more specifically, the Toyota Production System

(TPS), there’s a whole body of knowledge and research on how to reduce
waste in business.

TPS offers many different tools for waste reduction, such as Value Stream
Mapping, Kanban, and the 5S system.

The Japanese word for waste is muda (wastefulness, uselessness), which

relates to muri (overload) and mura (imbalance). All three are the
foundation on which the TPS philosophy is built.
Interestingly, in TPS waste is comprehensively categorized into the “7
wastes of lean”, with very concrete recommendations as to how to
reduce it. And that’s what you’ll learn in this article.

What is considered as waste in lean production?

We all intuitively know that waste is undesirable, both in business and our
personal lives.

In general we can define waste as something unwanted, poor, or bad;

something that doesn’t bring anything positive, usually appearing after a
specific process has been completed.

In business, a more formal definition would be that waste is all those

activities that don’t create any value for the market.

In other words, valuable are all those activities that directly or indirectly
lead to an outcome which a customer would be willing to pay for (creating
higher added value). Everything else is considered as waste.

It’s important to understand that every organization must also perform

activities that do not directly lead to value for customers, but do create
value indirectly. That’s why TPS defines two types of Muda:

Type-1: Necessary non value-adding activities for customers (necessary

waste)
Type-2: Unnecessary non value-adding activities for customers (pure
waste)

Reducing or removing Type-1 Muda should only happen after careful

analysis and consideration, in order to make sure the reduction won’t
impact the quality of the products or overall success of the company.

Nevertheless, the core task of all managers is to optimize efficiency in all

value-adding activities and minimize the non-value-adding activities.

With that in mind, research behind “lean production” has shown that even
if the products being produced in factories are totally different, the types
of waste across industries are very similar. And that brings us to the 7
wastes of lean.

What are the “7 wastes of lean”?

Before we go into the 7 wastes of lean, let’s revise the importance of

understanding waste vs. value.

The biggest waste of time, money, energy, passion, and life skills is
building or doing something that nobody wants or appreciates.

In business, customers vote how much they value products and services
with their money. Building the right things is a prerequisite for business
success. That’s not part of lean production deals with, but rather the lean
startup concept.

Next to that, when you know what to offer to the market (doing the right
things), you want to be as efficient as possible in doing that (doing things
right).

Efficiency is about achieving peak performance, where we use the least

amount of inputs to achieve the highest output. To minimize inputs, all
waste must be eliminated.

In terms of production efficiency, there are seven types of waste:

1. Transportation
2. Inventory
3. Motion
4. Waiting
5. Overprocessing
6. Overproduction
7. Defects
You can use the acronym ‘TIMWOOD’ to remember the 7 Wastes of Lean
easier.

Using a good time & attendance system and project time tracker and similar
technologies supporting business processes can greatly help to reduce
different types of waste listed above, especially those that are connected to
time waste.

Wasting time is one of the biggest wastes there is.

And now let’s look systematically at each one, as well as some ideas on how
to eliminate waste and achieve the maximum possible efficiency in the
process of production.

1. Transportation – Don’t unnecessarily move products or

materials

Unnecessary transportation is an obvious waste which is easy to notice.

Transportation is defined for this purpose as the movement of products or
materials from one location to other, the obvious thing being that
transportation adds no value to the product.

In lean production, what we consider a transportation waste is when we

are moving products that don't need to undergo any processing. In addition
to producing waste, every time a product is transported, it is at risk of being
damaged, lost or delayed.

The longer the product moves around, the longer it goes without any
value being added to it. Handling of the products is also part of
transportation waste.

Transportation waste is most often caused by:

Having several production or storage locations

Poorly laid out production lines
Overly-complex production processes
Large batch sizes
The solution: you have to minimize all transportation in the production
process and avoid any unnecessary steps between any two processes. There
must be a good flow between the processes, and strict limitation of work in
progress.

2. Inventory – All the access products and material that are

not being processed

Inventory or inventories are all the components, works in process, and

finished products not being processed. Every piece of raw material, all
finished goods, and every other item not being sold is actually a cost for
a company.

Additionally, inventory is a cost because it has to be stored, and

transported, and sometimes needs packaging. It can also be damaged.

Inventory waste might also be cash not used to generate income, space not
completely utilized, paperwork which is unnecessarily stored, etc. The most
frequent cause of excessive inventory is:

Overproduction of goods
Overspending on inputs
Inventory defects

The solution: Don’t store any extra inventory. Make purchases only when
needed and in quantities that are actually required.

3. Motion - All movement of equipment not done in the

easiest possible way

The waste of motion includes all movements that are not done as simply as
possible. It’s similar to the transportation of products, but movement refers
to the motion of equipment and operators.

We are talking here about people or equipment moving or walking more

than is required to perform processing.
All excessive motion represents big stress. In business, there is a saying
that even machines wear out. You want to save as much energy and
resources as possible, even at the micro level.

Examples of motion waste in business are:

Non-ergonomic office layouts

Walking to deliver paperwork
Searching for things
Lifting heavy things etc.

Motion waste usually disrupts the workflow and delays the start of
work.

The solution: A good way to reduce motion is to follow the 5S system of

organizing a workplace.

Try to simplify and optimize all motion in the production line, placing
equipment nearby, providing an ergonomic workspace, and implementing
visual signals so things are easy to find.

4. Waiting – idle production time where processes are not

optimally synchronized

Waiting, also known as queuing, is another type of waste. It simply means

waiting for the next production step or dealing with interruptions of
production during a shift change.

When two interdependent processes are not synchronized, idle time is

produced, and we have waiting waste. An example of this is waiting for an
answer from another department so you can take action, system downtime,
or waiting for shared equipment.

Waiting is most often caused by:

Poor process planning or layouts

 Idle equipment or unplanned downtimes
Bottle necks

The solution: Optimize and connect all processes in such a way that the
waiting time is minimized, and no time is wasted. The work should be
standardized and proper production takt time introduced.

5. Overprocessing – Investing more into a product than

customer values

Overprocessing means putting more into a product than is valued by the

customer. The goal is to do only the level of processing that matches
usefulness and necessity.

Similar to motion, this type of waste is very hard to notice and eliminate in
business.

An example of overprocessing in production is painting unseen areas.

Machines that are overprocessing because the whole process flow is
directed through them are also an example of this kind of waste.

In lean, small is beautiful. Overprocessing can also be a result of

unnecessary production steps, using older, outdated methods, or not having
standard work plans. It can also be caused by slow approval process.

Overprocessing is most often caused by:

Unnecessary production steps

Using outdated methods
A Lack of standardization
Slow approval process

The solution is to match the level of processing to what the customer wants
and is willing to pay for. Don’t do more, and avoid perfectionism in this
regard, rather always have the customer in mind before you start to work
on any task.
6. Overproduction – the waste of making too much too soon

The sixth type of waste is overproduction, which means producing more,

faster than needed, or “making too much too soon”.

It’s the worst of the 7 since it also leads to other kinds of waste and devalues
the need for constant improvement.

Overproduction leads to excess inventory, simply because it is production

ahead of demand. Overproduction is usually based on the “just in case”
mindset.

Many people think that inventory is an asset and has value, but in reality
the value is very low or doesn’t even exist.

The most frequent causes of overproduction are:

Poor forecasts of market demand

Unpredictable production schedules
Lack of automation or poor automation
Long setup times for production

The solution: Switch from the “just in case” mindset to “just in time”
production, by considering the overall takt time of a production line.

7. Defects – mistakes and errors that take time to fix

And finally we come to the last and most obvious type of waste – defects.

Every defected item requires repair or replacement, creates additional

paperwork, and wastes resources, materials, and time. It can often also
lead to loss of customers.

Most often defects are caused by:

A Lack of standardization
Inadequate quality control
 Insufficient machinery repair
Poor communication
Human errors

It’s better to prevent defects than try to detect them. Examples of defect
waste in business are missing information, errors, and client complaints.

The effort accompanying this type of waste consists of inspecting for

defects, avoiding mistakes, and fixing defects as fast as possible.
Standardizing all work and performing regular detection of abnormalities
is the way to go.

Other types of waste

Lean production is primarily directed at removing waste in production

factories. But you can quickly find the “synonyms” for every type of waste
in any kind of business, even in purely service-based industries.

No business is immune to waste.

For example, in a service-based industry the following could be considered

an equivalent to each of the 7 wastes:

Transportation: multitasking, going on unnecessary business trips …

Inventory: undelivered articles, code, any other type of output, tools that
nobody uses …
Motion: unnecessary meetings, looking for things in a messy office …
Waiting: waiting for meetings to start, waiting for other coworkers to
deliver, waiting for approvals …
Over processing: complex solutions to simple problems, doing things
manually that can be automated …
Over production: production articles, code, services that nobody is
willing to pay for …
Defects: bugs, spelling errors, …
And still we are not done yet with the different types of waste. Based on the
seven types of waste in TPS, other authors have added a few additional
ones:

Underutilization

Underutilization is a waste of talent, and it means failing to make use of

the people within an organization. People are the greatest assets by far,
and their underutilization is the greatest waste possible.

Every manager should strive towards developing and applying the

company’s talents in order to provide as much value as possible for the
markets. Make sure you fully utilize your people with a good project time
tracker with powerful time use visualization.

Waste of resources and materials

Waste of resources and materials in business is the failure to make

efficient use of electricity, gas, water, and other resources.

A waste of resources doesn’t only cost a lot of money, but also has many
other downsides, such as negatively affecting the environment and society
as a whole.

And just to list a few more:

Delays
Duplication
Unclear communication
Lack of information
Lost opportunities
Equipment breakdowns etc.

Easy steps to eliminate all 7 wastes of lean

There are five steps to eliminating every type of waste, which are:

1. See it: Make waste visible

2. Recognize it: Be conscious of waste
3. Define who is responsible: Be accountable for waste
4. Define the size and magnitude: Measure the waste
5. Eliminate or reduce the waste

First you have to know what is causing waste. If you have read this blog
post this far, you are well aware of the things which are potentially causing
waste at your organization.

Now you have to specifically identify the biggest waste that is draining your
resources and find out what type it is.

After that you have to decide if it’s only you who is responsible for the
waste, or if it also affects other stakeholders in the business. You, of course,
have to involve all the affected stakeholders in the process of removing
waste.

It’s good to measure the waste, to clearly see the price you are paying, and
determine the priority and difficulty of eliminating it.

There are four actions you can take when trying to eliminate waste::

Delete it / Stop doing it

Automate it / Reduce it
Merge it with other activities
Delegate it / Outsource it (if not part of the core value)

It sounds easier than it is, but when you see the benefits of eliminating
waste you get the motivation to do it more and more. Eliminating waste
is also part of the Kaizen philosophy in lean production.

Kaizen is a competitive strategy in which all employees work together to

create a strong culture of constant improvement, and part of becoming
better and better is improving efficiency and eliminating all waste. So,
happy cleaning.

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