Interested in the Toyota Floor Leadership Development ...The concept of Muda or Waste is a key lesson in the Toyota Production System. Shigeo Shingo, the co-developer of the Toyota

The 7 Forms of Waste www.shmula.com By Pete Abilla

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Preface This document, unlike other literature on the Toyota Production System or Lean Thinking, explains the concept of “waste” in the form of examples – many examples. The author finds that explanation through real-world examples is the most powerful way to teach and the most effective means for students to learn. This approach also aligns with Taiichi Ohno’s maxim of “practice over theory” – and that shall be our maxim also.

This document explains the concept of “waste”, shows waste in several real-world examples, and provides some insight into how to identify and effectively reduce or eliminate waste.

The intended audience for this document is as follows:

• If you are a student learning the Toyota Production System or Lean Manufacturing.

• If you are a practitioner of Lean. • If you are a researcher in the fields of Operations Management, Supply Chain

Management, Logistics, and general business education. • If you are a graduate student in business school or in an MBA program where

learning about process improvement or continuous improvement is part of your core studies.

I hope that you find this document helpful in your study of Lean.

Unless otherwise noted, Pete Abilla (www.shmula.com), is the author of the articles below.

Enjoy and thank you for reading.

Pete Abilla September 2010 Salt Lake City, Utah http://www.shmula.com/

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Introduction

Muda (無駄) is a traditional Japanese term which means “waste”. One way to increase profitability of the firm is to fundamentally reduce costs. From a Lean perspective, this means to reduce or eliminate wastes. Fundamentally reducing wastes means to be more profitable.

To properly understand waste, it is important to first clarify value and purpose.

Every process has a purpose. All the steps that lead to achieving that purpose are what we consider “value”. All the steps that do not support the purpose of the process is waste.

The concept of Muda or Waste is a key lesson in the Toyota Production System. Shigeo Shingo, the co-developer of the Toyota Production System observed the following:

“…only the last turn tightens the bolt. All previous turns is just motion.”1

Another way to describe waste is by categorizing our activities, like the following:

There are 3 types of activities, 2 of which produce waste:

A. Steps that definitely create value. B. Steps that create no value, but are necessary given the current state of the system. C. Steps that create no value and can be eliminated.

(B) & (C) naturally create waste, of which there are 7 types:

1. Overproduction: Producing more than is needed, faster than needed or before needed. 2. Waiting: Idle time that occurs when co-dependent events are not synchronized. 3. Transportation: Any material movement that does not directly support immediate

production. 4. Processing: Redundant effort (production or communication) which adds no value to

a product or service. 5. Inventory: Any supply in excess of process or demand requirements. 6. Motion: Any movement of people which does not contribute added value to the

product or service. 7. Defect: Repair or rework of a product or service to fulfill customer requirements.

One acronym that is helpful to remember the 7 Wastes is TIMWOOD.

1 A study of the Toyota Production System, http://tinyurl.com/269cvhh

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In what follows, you’ll read real examples of waste from various industries, processes, and fields in business. Specifically, you’ll read examples of wastes from the following:

• 7 Wastes in Software Engineering • 7 Wastes in Medical Billing • 7 Wastes in Product Development • 7 Wastes in Paid Search Marketing • 7 Wastes in Customer Service • 7 Wastes in Affiliate Marketing • 7 Wastes in Human Resources • 7 Wastes and the Office • 7 Wastes and the Environment

Suggested Reading:

• Kaizen and the Art of Creative Thinking, Shigeo Shingo, http://amzn.to/9TSBJm • Understanding A3 Thinking: A Critical Component of PDCA, http://amzn.to/dpS9g4 • Creating a Lean Culture, http://amzn.to/aETxnY • Managing to Learn: Using the A3 Management System, http://amzn.to/cTWDri • The Toyota Kata, http://amzn.to/diFW2w • The Toyota Way Fieldbook, http://amzn.to/bhpB4A • The Toyota Way, http://amzn.to/cKg4tb • Lean Thinking, http://amzn.to/dtxLu5 • Learning to See: Value Stream Management, http://amzn.to/cS9PEf

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http://amzn.to/9TSBJm

http://amzn.to/dpS9g4

http://amzn.to/aETxnY

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http://amzn.to/bhpB4A

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7 Wastes of Software Engineering

Written by Pete Abilla

Transportation

• Handoffs - Movement of product that does not add value.

Inventory

• Requirements - Product Requirements Documents (PRD), Story Cards - more material information than the customer needs

• Completed code, but not checked-in • Completed code, but not documented • Untested code, Code in staging environment, but not in production environment • Code with overwhelming amount of comments /*comments*/

Motion

• Task-Switching - Bodily or mental motion that does not add value • A evil-twin of Task-Switching is Multi-Tasking

Waiting

• Delay - Idle time when people, material, information, or equipment is not ready • Waiting for project approval • Waiting for resources • Waiting for change approval process • Waiting for product management or requirements

Overprocessing

• Extra Steps or Effort - effort that does not add value from the customer's perspective • Having to relearn what a function, class, or piece of code does • Having to refactor a piece of code when it already meets requirements

Overproduction

• More Stuff - Producing more than the customer needs or wants • Featuritis or Feature Bloat: more features than the customer needs, wants, or asked for • Wrong Thing - Building something a customer doesn't want or does not use

Defects

• Bugs - errors, rework, mistakes, or is missing something necessary

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7 Wastes of Medical Billing2

Written by Devin Cabanilla The bill processing and revenue stream in health care is particularly problematic,

complex and expensive. More than a decade ago, a New England Journal of Medicine3 article estimated administrative costs of health care to be as much as $294 billion (Campbell, et al.), and it has only increased since then.

The process begins when a patient makes an appointment and ends when a medical claim is paid by the insurance company. Countless staff and departments contribute to the flow of information and work to achieve payment for patient care provided. Every step in this lengthy process has the potential for administrative waste: excessive paperwork, back-and-forth interactions between provider and payor, nuanced contracts unique to each insurance company, and different forms and ways each payor wants to exchange information. It’s not surprising the hassle has led some doctors to refuse to accept certain forms of insurance payment at all.

Virginia Mason Medical Center’s Patient Financial Services has done extensive work to evaluate the revenue stream and diligently remove waste from the system. Below are some of the common revenue stream wastes in most medical settings today, and many which the Virginia Mason team has helped reduce or eliminate through its continuous improvement work.

Transportation

Movement of product that does not add value

• Using electronic clearinghouses to transmit medical claims to different insurance groups. • Faxing and mailing additional medical or insurance documentation between the patient,

payor and provider. • Mailing claims in paper format, using courier services.

Inventory

More material information than the customer needs

• Claims held in data systems pending queue transmission. • Mail correspondence from insurance companies notifying or requesting information.

2 Written by Devin Cabanilla who conducts continuous improvement activities in insurance enrollment and billing database areas at Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle. He applies the principles of Lean Management (Lean Manufacturing) to his work in healthcare. Outside of work Devin enjoys BBQ, Starcraft, reading, and spending time with his wife and two toddlers.

3 content.nejm.org/cgi/content/short/349/8/768

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• Specialized staff who only work with specific payors.

Motion

Bodily or mental motion that does not add value

• Claims channeled through redundant layers of system edits and checks at the provider source, clearinghouse and payor.

• Emailing questions to multiple people with claim-specific or insurance-specific questions

Waiting

Idle time when people, material, information, or equipment is not ready

• Waiting for forms, reviews, approvals and signatures. • Waiting for receipt of funds for claims aging beyond their original service date. • Waiting for payor review of a medical claim appeal. • Waiting for system upgrades and changes to be implemented due to new medical

procedures. • Waiting for payors to amend or update payment routines for the patient or provider based

on pending contract renewals. • Waiting on hold for customer services to obtain insurance information

Overprocessing

Effort that does not add value from the customer’s perspective

• Checking the claim status for every patient balance outstanding via phone, mail and internet portal.

• Receiving overpayment/underpayment, reprocessing the bill and re-pricing claim information for the payor.

• Sending a claim multiple times when no response is received from the payor. • New medical procedure codes, retesting software and claim checks. • Asking the patient for existing information: insurance cards, address, relatives.

Overproduction

Producing more than the customer needs or wants

• Generating multiple invoices/statements for the patient’s health care services. • Creating duplicate files in multiple folders within workstations and filing cabinets. • Recoupment efforts on low balance claims (e.g. $2 lab fees, $7 diagnostics).

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Defects

• Billing complaints for any reason from a patient are indicative of a defect. • System errors, such as corrupted data, miscoded system logic, data stream interruptions,

create claim denials or halt flow. • Transcription errors where clinical information was not input correctly resulting in denial. • Registration errors when inaccurate demographic information was not received from the

patient resulting in denial. • Unauthorized procedures, such as surgeries, procedures or inpatient stays requiring

authorization with the insurance company prior or during medical services, or denial will occur.

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The 7 Wastes of Product Development

Written by Tim McMahon 4The first step in eliminating waste from New Product Development (NPD), and thus

improving the process, is to learn to identify the eight wastes. By closely examining the entire NPD process from a Lean perspective, the opportunities to drive out waste and increase value will become obvious.

Defects

Defects are the result of executed processes that did not produce value.

• Improper information on drawing • Missing views on drawing • Incomplete information • Product flaws resulting in missing customer expectations • Reworking product or processes

Overproduction

Waste from producing product that is not currently needed or product that is not needed at all.

• Unnecessary documentation • Cost overruns due to excessive project time charging • Overlap of strategic and non-strategic projects competing for limited resources

4 Written by Tim McMahon. You can connect with on his blog – leanjourneytruenorth.blogspot.com. Tim McMahon is the Founder and Contributor of A Lean Journey Blog. This site is dedicated to sharing lessons and experiences along the Lean Journey in the Quest for True North. The blog also serves as the source for learning and reflection which are critical elements in Lean Thinking.

Tim is a lean practitioner with more than 10 years of Lean manufacturing experience. He currently leads continuous improvement efforts for a high tech manufacturer. Tim teaches problem solving skills, lean countermeasures, and how to see opportunities for improvement by actively learning, thinking and being engaged.

Tim McMahon has been supporting the AME Northeast Region Board of Directors as the Social Media Lead. His role is to identify how to best leverage social media tools for increasing networking within AME's Northeast Region. Social media tools include LinkedIn, Twitter, Slideshare, YouTube, Facebook, etc. Tim also works together with others on AME's Social Media Council to build AMEConnect, a members-only online networking site, and presence and content on the other Social Media sites.

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Waiting

No value is added while people wait for product to process or product waits for people or machines.

• Unbalanced workflow within the team • Time spent getting approvals • Dependant on the number of hand offs and task dependencies

Non-utilized resources/talent

The waste of underutilized intelligence and intellect commonly referred to as behavioral waste.

• Underutilizing people’s knowledge and creativity • Uneven work flow resulting with some team members overburdened while other

underutilized

Transportation

While the product is moving, no value is added to it.

• Carrying, mailing, or even e-mailing documents stops the process • In an electronic system look at the number of hand offs where we pass something to

someone else

Inventory

Inventory is the collection of unprocessed documents, data objects, and transactions queued-up between people and processes.

• Drawings and specification - we invest time to make them, update them, and manage them

• Collections of unprocessed information and data

Motion

Excess movement by people or equipment only consumes time and resources without producing value.

• Efficiency of software – number of mouse clicks, number of routines, number of transactions

• Frequently searching for drawings and other information on remote shared services like servers or printers

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Excess Processing

Doing more than what is necessary to generate satisfactory value as defined by the customer.

• Using software that has a function beyond what is needed • Product designs or processes that are too complex • Unnecessary steps in design process • Excessive number of iterations • Over-designed or over-engineered product

The acronym I prefer for remembering the eight wastes is DOWNTIME since it symbolizes lost opportunity. Another one that works well for NPD is TOWISDOM where S is skills. NPD is one essential element in the growth strategy that is so critical in all companies practicing Lean Thinking.

What examples of waste have you seen in your NPD process? How do you address the concerns, fears, uncertainties and misconceptions regarding Lean as it applies to NPD?

Have you heard any of these myths before?

• “Lean only applies to the factory. It won’t work in my area.” • “We can’t apply Lean to NPD because what we do is not repetitive.” • “Product Design is creative, based on discovery and innovation; Lean will remove all

creativity by forcing us to work to standards.” • “Lean works well only on linear processes. Product Development is project-based and

has multiple parallel processes and task dependencies. Lean is simplistic” • “Every task is executed differently on every project; you can’t implement standardized

work on projects.” • “There is no ‘Gemba’ (visible production area) in product development because design

teams are not co-located and much of the work is subcontracted.” • “Customer demand and Takt time are not relevant because there is no customer; we work

to the project deadline.”

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The 7 Wastes of Paid Search Marketing

Written by Matt LeVeque

5I’VE BEEN WORKING in the Search Engine Marketing industry for a while in various capacities and have spent the last 3 years working in an agency setting managing multiple Paid Search accounts. During this time I have come to learn that there is a significant amount of waste that goes into managing these accounts. Waste in Paid Search comes in many forms such as reorganizing campaigns and ad groups, waiting for 3rd party analytics software to work (and work properly), fixing of broken URLs and the list goes on.

Waste in this industry, and any industry for that matter, is considered non-value added work that your company or your client is not willing to pay for. At Toyota Taiichi Ohno, one of the founding fathers of the Toyota Way, lean management system and the Toyota Production System, described the 7 Wastes of Production as “all activity that adds cost but not value”.

For all intents and purposes, even though Search Engine Marketing may be perceived as a service, the reality is that what goes on behind the scenes is more like a manufacturing operation. We build Paid Search marketing campaigns, some times from scratch, that consist of various components just like manufacturing a product. Search marketers design and build these campaigns in order to serve ads when the end user requires them – very similar to the pull system used in lean manufacturing and at Toyota.

This comparison might seem way off base for anyone not familiar with lean or new to Paid Search so let’s get to the subject of this article and talk about the 7 Wastes of Production and how they relate to the life of Paid Search Marketer.

5 By Matt LeVeque has over 10 years of website management and online marketing experience. He is currently working as the Sr. Manager, Search Marketing & Quality Services with ClickEquations, the industry leader in software-based search marketing that improves paid search campaign performance through intelligent automation. Matt Leveque is a Google AdWords Qualified Individual, a Microsoft adExcellence Member and a thought leader in quality search engine marketing topics.

His view of search engine marketing is heavily influenced by quality principles, systems thinking and sustainable practices.

Prior to his position at ClickEquations Matt was the Sales & Online Marketing Manager for Rath & Strong Management Consultants, the leading global provider of Lean, Six Sigma, Lean Six Sigma and Organizational Development consulting & training. He is currently an active Senior Member of the American Society for Quality (ASQ), the Sustainable Business Network of Greater Philadelphia and the Information Architecture Institute. Matt’s extended professional profile can be found at LinkedIn. Matt publishes his writings at senscience.com/sem-blog.

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http://www.clickequations.com/


Overproduction

Producing more than the customer needs right now.

This can be related to things like duplicate keywords across multiple ad groups, too many ad creatives that make testing irrelevant or bidding on the same keyword with multiple match types at the same bid.

Waiting

Idle time created when material, information, people, or equipment is not ready.

This one is my favorite because to me it’s the biggest contributor to waste. In this case idle time spent while waiting for 3rd party analytics tools to load or refresh and do so properly is #1 on my list. Other contributors to waiting are things like waiting for days until your agency rep calls you back, waiting for your client to make decisions and waiting for colleagues to review client deliverables. Recently Google AdWords has taken notice of the waste of waiting and will now dock you Quailty Score points for destination landing page load time.

Inventory

More materials, parts, or products on hand than the customer needs right now.

This is similar the ‘too much too soon’ or ‘big bang effect’ of building out a new Paid Search account with more campaigns and stuffing the ad groups with 1,000’s of keywords – much more than necessary. Work in progress is related to the waste of inventory as well. Another form of inventory related waste as it relates to fair competition is the double and triple serving of ads that some companies and agencies get away with.

Motion

Movement of people that does not add value.

Okay so we are not moving people, but in ’service’ related industries, the waste of motion includes things like searching your desktop or file folders for that excel file you used two months ago. Using multiple tabs in a web browser or having to take multiple steps in UI to make one small change is waste of motion. Throwing nerf-darts at your co-works is a HUGE waste of motion, but a hell of a lot of fun.

Defects

Work that contains errors, rework, mistakes or lacks something necessary.

This is another big one. Inheriting a Paid Search account from another agency or in-house operation always requires rework. Reorganization of campaigns in a way that is logical so that is

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both cost efficient and effective toward growth can take months depending on the size of the account. Other Paid Search defects include broken destination URLs, landing page offers that do not match the ad creative, ad creatives that do not match search queries and keywords that are simply too broad to be effectively targeted.

Overprocessing

Effort that adds no value from the customer’s viewpoint.

Overprocessing can almost always be attributed to extra steps added to manual work. Building Paid Search campaigns with multiple ad groups and keywords is a very manual process and so is most reporting on the success of these efforts. There are automated (see Pay-Per-Click Autonomation) ways to improve the waste of over processing.

Another example of over processing in Paid Search or any similar marketing channel is not fully understanding client/user requirements or expectations. For example if a 3rd party analytics tool can have all the bells and whistles and even tell you the color shirt a user was wearing when a purchase was made but cannot make the simple export function work properly, the analytics development team produced more than was required by the Paid Search Marketer.

Transportation

Movement of product that does not add value.

This one is a little tricky for Paid Search. One example would be trying to build out a Yahoo Search Marketing account from scratch by trying to import the existing Google AdWords account. Because of editorial differences between the two platforms there can be a significant amount of waste in moving one campaign structure to another.

Hopefully this clarifies the similarities of shop-floor production to cube-wall production and sheds some light on the types of waste to be aware of when taking on the responsibilities of a Paid Search Marketer.

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The 7 Wastes of Contact Centers

Written by Pete Abilla

I recently bought a Dishwasher from Sears. My experience was terrible – numerous calls to customer service and a field operations team that wasn’t friendly to the customer.

Here’s a timeline of my experience:

That experience exposed a lot of waste in customer service operations, some of which I highlight below:

Transportation


• [see Motion].

Inventory


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• Abandonment Rate is a measure of how many customers are not willing to wait. The number of customers waiting can be considered inventory. The goal is zero inventory - or some manageable level based on workforce.

Motion


• Who enjoys being transferred from one customer service agent to another, to another, to another, to another? This unnecessary motion just adds to wait time, burden on the customer, and potentially loss of business or poor satisfaction.

Waiting


• Waiting for anything - people, paper, machines, the FAX machine, copier, information. • Waiting for a customer service agent.

Overprocessing

Effort that does not add value from the customer's perspective

• In my Sears poor customer experience, I was asked for my phone number, name, and address - 6 TIMES.

Overproduction


• No, I'm not interested in your other services or products. Don't peddle merchandise to me - just please solve my problem.

• I know customer service agents have a hard job - they are often the messengers getting blamed for the problems of the company. That's not fair. But, one type of overproduction is when the agent tells the customer how hard of a day he's had - the customer doesn't need to know you've had a hard day. Just please try to resolve the customer's problem.

Defects

• The reason why I'm calling in the first place - service wasn't done right the first time. In my case, it wasnt' done right the second time, third time either.

• As a customer, being treated nice and respectfully is expected; when not, that's a defect.

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The 7 Wastes of Affiliate Marketing

Written by Porter Haney6

Affiliate marketing7 is an efficient internet marketing channel that monetizes web traffic through a revenue share. This relationship typically exists between e-commerce merchants and content sites, with a merchant paying a percent of sales generated by a specific site.

In principle this arrangement is relatively simple. In practice affiliate marketing8 has become a complicated process of affiliates, merchants, and affiliate networks built to facilitate these relationships. Many of these systems can add undue wastes to an otherwise simple process. I'll highlight a few of these wastes and where one might be able to improve.

Transportation


• The movement of ad creatives and feeds between multiple affiliate networks. Do you need more than one affiliate network? Can you post all creative assets in one place?

Inventory


• The number of affiliate or merchant relationships maintained. Are they active? Are they producing? Are they representing your brand well?

• The type and number of ad creatives maintained. Is anyone using them? Are they converting? Do you have IAB standard sizes?

6 Porter Haney currently oversees online marketing at SwarmBuilder.com and publishes mountain adventure articles at FamousInternetSkiers.com. He's been involved with web marketing at Backcountry.com, Atomic Skis, and The Mount Washington Observatory. 7 Affiliate marketing is a marketing practice in which a business rewards one or more affiliates for each visitor or customer brought about by the affiliate's marketing efforts. Examples include rewards sites, where users are rewarded with cash or gifts, for the completion of an offer, and the referral of others to the site. The industry has four core players: the merchant (also known as 'retailer' or 'brand'), the network, the publisher (also known as 'the affiliate') and the customer. The market has grown in complexity to warrant a secondary tier of players, including affiliate management agencies, super-affiliates and specialized third parties vendors. Affiliate marketing overlaps with other Internet marketing methods to some degree, because affiliates often use regular advertising methods. Those methods include organic search engine optimization, paid search engine marketing, e-mail marketing, and in some sense display advertising. On the other hand, affiliates sometimes use less orthodox techniques, such as publishing reviews of products or services offered by a partner. Affiliate marketing—using one website to drive traffic to another—is a form of online marketing, which is frequently overlooked by advertisers. While search engines, e-mail, and website syndication capture much of the attention of online retailers, affiliate marketing carries a much lower profile. Still, affiliates continue to play a significant role in e-retailers' marketing strategies (wikipedia). 8 Affiliate programs include, Commission Junction, share-a-sale, clickbank, and other best affiliate programs, top rated affiliate programs.

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• The number of landing pages maintained. Do they match ad creatives? Could you get by with fewer landing pages?

Motion


• Switching between tasks: creative maintenance, commission audits, affiliate communications, internal reporting, tracking metrics, optimizing landing pages. Can you organize better?

• Searching reports for missing data: sales, creatives, affiliates, conversions. • Searching feeds for missing information: products, descriptions, prices.

Waiting


• Delays in communications with affiliates. Delays in affiliates pushing promotions live. Can you incent faster behavior?

• Waiting for web analytics software, affiliate network software. • Waiting for new ad creatives, promotion events.

Overprocessing


• Merging network and analytic data. Do you need specifics, or just trends? • Paying manual incentives to affiliates. Can you automate? • Digging too deep into a specific affiliate or merchants problem or program.

Overproduction


• Too many ad creatives, affiliates, merchants, reports, metrics, affiliate networks. Are you spending too much time in any of these categories?

Defects

• Errors in commissions, product feeds, internal / external reporting. • Discrepancies ad creatives and landing pages.

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The 7 Wastes of Human Resources

Written by Jim Baran9 Lean is a people system. Its design is business continuous improvement and respect for

people every minute of every day. If this is true, my watch stopped 15 years ago.

I’ve worked in and with human resources for the past 30 years. The last 15 years providing talent to hundreds of lean inspired companies. Regarding people processes it seems as if nothing has changed. The people processes in existence before lean have not changed because of lean.

The goal of lean is to provide products and services to customers without nonsense and waste. The assumption that all human business is somehow HR business is mistaken.

The reality is HR and lean organizations share in the consequences of a disengaged workforce. It is nonsense that these two factions rarely connect, collaborate, or participate together purposefully in the lean process. This disconnection creates knowledge resource waste. Instead of purpose and credibility, the workforce sees special effects. Respect teeters daily.

Overproduction: Overproduction is waste defined as producing work or providing a service prior to it being required or requested.

• Perhaps, overproduction in the human business of lean is best portrayed as over enthusiasm. To quickly get our arms around lean, we’ve built separate lean departments to coexist beside established HR departments. Each is independently managed. Common purpose is difficult to ascertain.

• The problem with HR & lean not joined collectively is this: both exist because of people. Both produce to, not for people, at different speeds, different directions, and with

9 Jim Baran owns Value Stream Leadership. Jim has been a student of lean since 1985. VSL’s work includes: hiring lean inspired talent and helping companies better connect their existing talent so all interact and participate daily in the lean process.

Jim’s background includes many years in manufacturing human resources leadership and talent project management. He connects with life through family and fly-fishing.

• VSL Website: http://www.valuestreamleaders.com/ • Blog RSS feed: http://www.valuestreamleaders.com/index.php/blog/rss_2.0/ • The Lean Career Compass: http://bit.ly/311Aep • LeanBlog Podcast #88 – Jim Baran on Lean Talent Management http://lnbg.us/1CH • Twitter: @LEANVSL & @leancraftsman • LinkedIn: http://bit.ly/12UT21 • Facebook Fan Page: http://bit.ly/bAF4nR

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different expectations. Lean measures human performance with value creating rules and tools; HR measures human defects with complex ever changing laws. Skill development is overshadowed by justifications.

• These disjointed mindsets are often interpreted by internal customers more with “if then” uncertainty than sustained value. Tribal customs remain in constant motion and conflict with expected and ideal lean transformation performance standards. Messy.

Waiting: What are we waiting for?

• What’s keeping HR and Lean from joining together to work on the human business of lean? Are we waiting for contract signatures to tell us we must work together to accomplish greater good?

• Some lean inspired HR folks I’ve spoken with embrace and engage in lean activities often – not because they have to, but because they understand value is in the action. Lean thinkers seem to enjoy and spend much time “turning the lights on” in knowledge workers heads but almost no time in the heads of people who work with people knowledge daily. For years we’ve tried connecting HR & Lean through osmosis. The time to self-initiate is now. Any step closer to close the gap between these two groups is incremental improvement.

Motion: If HR is more about recognizing flaws as to comply with laws, then people will often go through the motions to comply. Motions are not processes. If visible processes are constructed between HR and Lean then they can began to interact with each other daily and start learning from each other. We don’t need a judge to grant joint custody of the human assets inside a lean learning organization.

Transportation or conveyance: There are usually no planned routes connecting lean knowledge and learning between the various people systems and processes lean learners travel.

• It’s my experience lean is interpreted and practiced differently at every company. It’s supposed to be different because people, not plaques or certificates perform the work.

• HR and Lean practitioners both depend on external sources to certify their knowledge credibility. HR utilizes the Society of Human Resources Management (SHRM); Lean has assorted choices. All are portable. A few years ago, companies started certifying their workforces to measure lean learning and application progress (bronze, silver, chartreuse, etc.). Unfortunately, workforce certification is limited to the company you’re currently working for.

• What collective knowledge transfers to those performing the work? Who earns more money, those certifying or those performing the work? Since both HR and lean share responsibility for a disengaged workforce, and lean knows no boundaries, does it not make more sense to have one collective body of knowledge than several?

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Overprocessing: Lean is about thought processes.

• People don’t like being told one thing while witnessing something else taking place. Stop over processing minds and under estimating intellect by the representation of lean solely in context of creating customer value. Who are the customers of lean learning? What learning is taking place when employees see their factories dismantled, sold, and jobs disappearing? They hear learning is taking place but have to wait a year or more for feedback on a performance appraisal form that typically says nothing about people and lean and the skills that bind its progress.

• Engagement? Try engaging HR and Lean first. Let them collectively work on modeling ideal Lean leadership behaviors. It should motivate more people to participate daily in the lean process, not question it.

Inventory:

• How many HR people does it take to change a light bulb? In non lean organizations it requires an army. One to evaluate the job, another to determine how much to pay the bulb changer, another to evaluate their attitude and performance, and yet another to weigh up what benefits the changer might receive for performing the work. Others deploy on ladder climbing training and work safety procedures. Still unsure, we rely on experts to assess whether the bulb changer has suitable behavioral capabilities to perform the work. If all fails, an entire legal team is on call to assess collateral damage.

• In lean organizations, HR and lean join to provide information and skills flow that directly supports work being performed. The bulb changer understands everything about the work and all steps involved in doing it. What’s more, work combinations are practiced daily to improve timing, quality, and safety. Excess inventory is eliminated by losing a few experts and attorneys. Remaining “what-if” resources are deployed elsewhere to produce “can do”.

Defects: This category of waste refers to the amount of processing required to correct a defect.

• Lean in western cultures has been implemented for decades. I’ve spoken to thousands of lean leaders who are justifiably frustrated with responsibility for changing cultures singlehandedly. Lean was never intended to be implemented or led by one department. However, most companies practice it this way.

• If future and ideal states of lean produce different mindsets, job designs and performance standards than those currently practiced, defects will continue to occur by default.

• HR and Lean need to construct processes between them to eliminate defects caused by conflicting respect for people ideology. Without a visible process connecting both, our vision is more like a large retail parking lot where people are constantly backing into each other. We either need bigger mirrors, better signs, or fewer parking spaces.

Connecting HR and Lean isn’t a blue sky proposal. A visible process to connect and skills to improve daily participation between these two groups is needed now. We’ve learned much from the founding fathers of lean. HR and Lean can start today by learning lessons from the past.

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The 7 Wastes and the Environment

Written by Pete Abilla Taiichi Ohno's Seven Wastes are not only relevant for business and profits, but also has

an impact on our environment. This article attempts to highlight the impact the Seven Wastes has on the earth, environment [1. wonderful source, lean and the environment].

Transportation


• More energy use for transport • Emissions from Transport • More space required for work in process (WIP), increasing lighting, heating, and cooling

demands and energy consumption • More packaging required to protect parts and components during transport • Transportation of hazardous materials requires special shipping and packaging to prevent

risk during accidents

Inventory


• More packaging to store work-in-process (WIP) • Wastes from deterioration or damage to store WIP • More materials needed to replace damage WIP • More energy used to heat, cool, and light inventory space

Motion


• Similar to the waste of Transportation, humans are often required to move material and environmental impact is made from the waste of motion and transportation.

• Driving a car to work, back, school, and the grocery store, etc.

Waiting


• Potential material spoilage or component damage • Wasted energy from heating, cooling, and lighting during production downtime

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http://www.epa.gov/lean/


Overprocessing


• More parts used or consumed per unit of production • Unnecessary processing increases wastes, energy use, potential human bodily harm, and

emissions

Overproduction


• More raw materials and energy consumed in making the unnecessary products • Extra products may spoil, become obsolete, requiring disposal, space utilization,

emissions, human effort

Defects

• Raw materials and energy consumed in making defective products • Defective components require recycling or disposal • More space required for rework and repair, increasing energy use for heating, cooling,

and lighting

It's Your Turn

What other examples do you have? Do you agree or disagree? What are your thoughts on Environmental Metrics, such as:

• Scrap/Non-product Output • Materials Use • Hazardous Materials Use • Energy Use • Water Use • Air Emissions • Solid Waste • Hazardous Waste • Water Pollution/Wastewater

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The 7 Wastes and the Office

Written by Pete Abilla Remembering that work that adds no value to the customer is how Waste is defined in

Lean Thinking. Given that, there's a lot of Waste in the office. Indeed, some estimate that a significant percentage of total administrative costs is Waste as it is defined in Lean Thinking.

Transportation


• Transporting material or documents farther than necessary, or temporarily locating, filing, stocking, stacking, or moving materials, people, information, paper - wastes time and effort.

Inventory


• Excess stock - more than is needed or wanted. • Unnecessary copies, extra supplies (more than is needed - beyond some safety buffer.

Motion


• Unnecessary work movements or extra motion to complete a task is waste.

Waiting


• Waiting for anything - people, paper, machines, the FAX machine, copier, information. • Anything that causes a workflow to stop.

Overprocessing


• Unnecessary processing of anything increases wastes, energy use, potential human bodily harm, and can impact morale

• Redundant steps - checking someone else's work, obtaining multiple signatures, or excessive reviews

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• The Annual Employee Review can be added to this; a more effective review is a weekly or daily - short feedback loops allows for learning and growth; annual employee reviews are largely unhelpful to the reviewer and the reviewee.

Overproduction


• Extra of anything takes up valuable office space and wastes raw materials - paper, attention, etc.

Defects

• Having to do anything over because it wasn't done right the first time is waste

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