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The Continuous Improvement Companion

By  Jeff Hajek , Founder of Velaction

The Continuous Improvement Companion  is our freeguide to making your job better. Use it online, ordownload terms to create your own personalized

desktop reference.

See our entire list of terms and many additionalfeatures at http://www.velaction.com/lean-dictionary/ 

Revision Date: 11/9/2011

 The "seven wastes" is one of the most important continuousimprovement terms you will hear. Most of the Lean tools, at

their core, focus on reducing waste to improve flow. 

 The seven wastes provide a systematic way to categorize

problems and identify improvement priorities. When assessing

a process, looking for the seven wastes helps Lean teams find

more opportunities to streamline the flow of work.

The 7 Wastes are:

  Waste of  Defects 

  Waste of Overprocessing

  Waste of  Transportation 

  Waste of Motion

  Waste of Waiting

  Waste of  Inventory 

  Waste of  Overproduction 

Taiichi Ohno (considered by many to be the father of Lean)

highlighted overproduction as the worst of all the 7 Wastes.

Occasionally, an extra waste will be added to the original sevenwastes. This 8th waste is unused creativity.

 Try not to get too wrapped up on deciding which form of waste

something is — waste elimination, or at least waste reduction, is

the goal. It doesn’t really matter which category you assign it

to. If something is muda , eliminate as much of it as possible.

7Wastes

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In a Lean culture, waste is usually defined as anything that

doesn’t add value. Note that the term 'waste' is often used

interchangeably with the Japanese word, muda, but more

accurately, muda  means 'wasteful activity'. It is closely related

to the terms mura  (variation or inconsistency) and muri  

(unreasonableness or overexertion).

See some of our related Lean Training Systemcomponents… 

PowerPoint  DVD  StudentGuide 

TrainingExercise 

WasteForm 

Click the links or images, or go to  http://www.velaction.com/waste/  

to purchase these components. 

Watch a waste video at http://www.velaction.com/waste/ or

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=GX0PTnFMFag. 

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 Taiichi Ohno identified seven types of waste.1 

1.  Defects . Defects in products —when items don’t work

properly  — are clearly a waste. But defects can also happenin processes, such as building the wrong model or

delivering a part to the wrong location. Defects obviously

require work to correct. Worse, if they make their way

downstream to a customer, the poor quality can reduce

profit in the form of lost sales. Defects give otherwise loyal

customers a reason to lok elsewhere for a more reliable

product. Where can defects be traced back to?

Every defect is caused by an error in a process.

 The obvious solution then is to find where the errors occur

and fix the process. Defects for a roadside lemonade stand

include the obvious — spoiled lemons or bugs in the

lemonade, but spilled drinks, sticky cups, or incorrect

change are all types of defects as well.

2.  Overprocessing . This is generally viewed as anything in

excess — any unnecessary steps or processes that do not add

value to the end product or service. A young neighborhood

boy selling lemonade would be overprocessing if he shook

up his lemonade in a sealed container and then stirred it as

well.

3.  Transportation. Moving material from one place to another

wastes time and energy and includes a risk of loss or

damage. At first glance, transportation may seem necessary;

but, it is normally the result of a non-Lean layout.

Sometimes, this type of waste is so bad that when a

particular route is traced on top of a factory map, it lookslike a bowl of tangled spaghetti! This type of waste can be

present in an Lean office as well —  if you have to carry a file

down a hall to a fax machine and then walk it back to a file

storage room. Jimmy might have had this form of waste if

1 (Ohno, 1988)

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he frequently carried lemons, water, or cups back and forth

between the house and the stand. 

4.  Motion . While moving material or products from one

location to another is transportation waste, the unnecessary

movements of workers or tools is a waste of motion. Wasted

motion takes time and uses up energy, especially if the tool

or equipment is heavy. Other examples include the

following:

  Re-orienting parts to get them into a new position.

  Walking between work stations to get tools.

  Shuffling files to get to the right one.

  Flipping a tool around in your hand to get it ready touse.

If Jimmy took phone orders, and had to walk into the house

each time the phone rang, that would be an example of

wasted motion.

5.  Waiting . Waiting for parts, letting glue set, watching a

machine work, staring at the hourglass on a computer

screen — all this is waste. Jimmy would be wasting time if he

stood by watching his juicer squeeze lemons.

6.  Inventory. An excess of  inventory ties up money that could

be used for other things. It also slows down the speed of

production, which matters most when custom products or

perishables are involved. It is important to remember that

inventory includes not only supplies of raw materials but

also finished products awaiting sale. Jimmy has inventory

waste when his stockpile of lemons and sugar exceeds his

immediate needs. 

7.  Overproduction. Overproduction occurs any time an

upstream process produces more than a downstream

process can use right away. The result is always the same.

Inventory piles up along the value stream. Overproducers

generally have a reason for making more than needed.

Workstations might be far apart, and big batches reduce

travel time. Maybe the overproduction is a hedge against

maintenance problems. Perhaps machines take a long time

to switch between parts, so the operators run large lots.

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Regardless of the reasons (most of which are avoidable),

overproduction is wasteful. Slicing lemons faster than they

can be juiced is an example of overproduction in Jimmy’s

roadside operation.

You might also see an eighth waste. It is normally called

something like the underutilization of people or unused

creativity. In a nutshell, it deals with the waste of human

potential. People in every organization have great ideas inside

of them. Leaving those ideas untapped certainly sounds like

waste.

Many people have the misconception that overproduction does

not exist outside of the manufacturing sector. Lean office waste

(and service waste) certainly looks different than it does in

manufacturing, but it is present nonetheless. It is primarilyapparent when work is pushed onto the next step and hits a

bottleneck, where it will sit for a long period before being

touched again.

When work gets passed on without any regard for how backed

up the next worker is, the system soon gets swamped and bogs

down. For example, an overworked engineer may routinely

have design change requests piled into a stuffed inbox. What’s

the result? Being backed up adds work — prospecting to find

the right document, trying to prioritize, and answering theinevitable calls of, “Where’s my stuff?” Notice that these things

are actually other forms of waste. That is because:

Overproduction creates or hides all the other six types of

waste. For that reason, it is widely considered to be the

worst of the Seven Wastes.

You can also think of excess capacity as overproduction in

service environments. For instance, when a plane takes off, the

airline is paying to move all the seats, whether they are empty

or full.

Excess capacity in the office (and in service) is

overproduction and costs money.

This entry was adapted from Jeff Hajek's book  Whaddaya Mean I Gotta Be

Lean?  

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Visit http://www.velaction.com/waste-recording-form/ to

download a free waste recording form. It is a great tool that you

can use to identify the seven forms of waste, and start thinking

about which ones to work top eliminate first.

  Don’t spend more than a few seconds trying to categorize

waste. The key is to identify it.

  Don’t spend time identifying waste if you aren’t going to

work to eliminate it. That just adds to the waste.

  Don’t tolerate waste. It is easy to become numb to it. The

more visual you make a process, the more waste stands

out.

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some floorspace. Doing those things will remove all the

cushioning that is built into a process, and will highlight its

inefficiencies.

   The 7 Wastes are a great way to make waste

identification a systematic process.

 Categorizing waste into the seven forms makes you morelikely to identify a greater number of problems.

  Identifying waste is only part of the battle. You still have

to eliminate it.

Download a waste recording form, and observe a process. Work

as a team to get more sets of eyes on a process and use the

discussion to help identify even more waste. Talking about the

problems often triggers additional ideas.

Use the list of waste as the basis for an improvement plan. Go

after the biggest problems that seem to have the best chance

for resolution first.

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About Velaction Continuous Improvement

Velaction Continuous Improvement is focused on helping

leaders develop the systems companies need to make frontline

improvement efforts more successful. Visit our website to see

how our extensive line of products and services can help speed

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About Jeff Hajek

Jeff Hajek is a master black belt, the author ofthe award-winning book, Whaddaya Mean I

Gotta Be Lean? , and the founder of Velaction

Continuous Improvement. He has nearly two

decades of leadership and Lean experience, which

he blogs about at www.GottaGoLean.com 

 Jeff has worked in a wide variety of roles and industries. His

broad experience and extensive contact with frontline

employees gives him a unique perspective that helps him

create grassroots support for a company's improvementinitiatives.

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