In the Toyota Production System, Taiichi Ohno, its developer, identified 7 major wastes:
· Waste of over production (largest waste) – making too much of a product and not being able to sell it. Idle inventory is a waste.
· Waste of time on hand (waiting) – of course this would be waste because while a worker is not adding value, he or she is costing the company money.
· Waste of transportation – while products are moving around the factory floor, no value is being added to them and that is a big waste.
· Waste of processing itself – when Taiichi Ohno looked at many of Toyota processes, he found that they were not very efficient in delivering value. They were wasteful processes.
· Waste of stock at hand – if you have stock in inventory waiting for production. That is a big waste. It is the foundation of just in time to deliver material to a work process just before it is needed – “Just in Time – JIT.”
· Waste of movement – whenever you look at a factory and see a worker or a pallet of materials moving around a factory, that is a waste. People can’t add value walking around and material can’t have value added to it, if it is moving around the factory.
· Waste of making defective products – this is almost obvious but it was the foundation of the thinking of Total Quality Management (TQM) a number of years ago. Phil Crosby and a number of quality gurus became phenomenal successes by focusing their efforts on reducing quality defects. This has, in turn, led to the current 6-Sigma craze.
These are all well and good but…they don’t cover all the areas of waste in a business. They certainly can be guides for how a piece of paper moves through an office. If it waits at any stage, it is a waste of movement. If a worker has a pile of work at her desk and the others in the office have no pile of work, maybe there is an imbalance of work in the process. Listen in to find out how we have broken the process down to make it an enjoyable and profitable process for all involved. Enjoy. Best, Len Bertain
In the Toyota Production System, Taiichi Ohno, its developer, identified 7 major wastes:
· Waste of over production (largest waste) – making too much of a product and not being able to sell it. Idle inventory is a waste.
· Waste of time on hand (waiting) – of course this would be waste because while a worker is not adding value, he or she is costing the company money.
· Waste of transportation – while products are moving around the factory floor, no value is being added to them and that is a big waste.
· Waste of processing itself – when Taiichi Ohno looked at many of Toyota processes, he found that they were not very efficient in delivering value. They were wasteful processes.
· Waste of stock at hand – if you have stock in inventory waiting for production. That is a big waste. It is the foundation of just in time to deliver material to a work process just before it is needed – “Just in Time – JIT.”
· Waste of movement – whenever you look at a factory and see a worker or a pallet of materials moving around a factory, that is a waste. People can’t add value walking around and material can’t have value added to it, if it is moving around the factory.
· Waste of making defective products – this is almost obvious but it was the foundation of the thinking of Total Quality Management (TQM) a number of years ago. Phil Crosby and a number of quality gurus became phenomenal successes by focusing their efforts on reducing quality defects. This has, in turn, led to the current 6-Sigma craze.
These are all well and good but…they don’t cover all the areas of waste in a business. They certainly can be guides for how a piece of paper moves through an office. If it waits at any stage, it is a waste of movement. If a worker has a pile of work at her desk and the others in the office have no pile of work, maybe there is an imbalance of work in the process. Listen in to find out how we have broken the process down to make it an enjoyable and profitable process for all involved. Enjoy. Best, Len Bertain