Waste and it's Impact on the Customer

Various Forms of Waste

Ways to Attack Waste, Delays, Bottlenecks & Non-valued Added Activities

You Get the Best Returns by Improving Your Processes First Before Making Further IT Investments

The Various Forms of Waste from the perspective of Lean and Lean Six Sigma

The forms of waste found in organizations may be categorized into the following:

  • Defects or Quality Problems - re-work due to quality issues, handling customer complaints that could have been avoided
  • Over-Production - over-providing value or information which is not required by the customer
  • Over-Processing – processes with too numerous hand-offs or approval steps
  • Transportation - too much transportation of documents, components, equipment etc
  • Motion - unnecessary motion or movement of people, resources, data etc
  • Waiting - due to delays, queuing or bottlenecks which increase lead time impacting speed of delivery and customer satisfaction
  • Inventory - too much cash tied up in stock, high work-in-progress leading to long cycle times
  • Non-Lean Behaviors – lack of teamwork, marginal motivation of workforce, employees putting effort into things that do not matter, management not providing a sense of direction to the workforce
  • Complexity – too many products or service offerings often creates significant complexity in the entire organization. Similarly processes that are more complex than they need to be also causes waste.
  • Non-Value-Add Activities - consider eliminating any activity that does not add value to your customers