DOWNTIME: The Eight Types of Waste

The difference between a lean and a fat organization is waste. Lean + Waste = Fat, if you will. Hence, for an organization to transform into a lean state it should trim as much waste as possible. But, what is waste anyways? And what variant shapes could waste take?

In my previous post “The State of Being Lean or Fat Is a Matter of your Own Choice” I discussed the Waste Elimination Process. It comprises six steps to transform into a lean state. In the second step (Recognize the Wastes), diverse types of waste are to be identified in the process under study. In particular, the lean transformation practitioner is hunting anything that is characterized by two related attributes: value and pay.

What is Waste?

Waste, muda in Japanese, is anything that does not add value to the product or service. Therefore, the customer is not willing to pay for. Are you willing to pay an extra twenty dollars for a shirt that is priced at fifty for being packed in a fancy, carton box? Unless fabric quality is different, I am confident you won’t.

From a business perspective, will moving raw material from a warehouse to a distant production line add any value to the quality of its product? Absolutely not, and the customer will not accept paying for this extra transportation.

Types of Waste

In addition to the clear definition of waste, there are eight distinct types of waste in Lean philosophy. Such makes it even easier to recognize waste in any setting. Luckily, these eight types can be combined in one acronym- DOWNTIME. Each letter in DOWNTIME represents the first letter of one type of waste.

Waste
The Eight Types of Waste

Below is a breakdown of DOWNTIME into the eight types of waste along with their definitions:

Defect is a product or information that does not meet customer expectations. It could be a damaged or improperly functioning computer screen. In the service industry, it may take the shape of delivery of a courier shipment to the wrong address, or late delivery of a shipment to the consignee.

Overproduction is producing material or information more than required, or before being required by the downstream customer. For example, producing twenty tons of a product for a customer order of eighteen tons. Probably, the production manager intends to make up for some prospect defected quantity. Make-to-stock, rather than make-to-sell, is another shape of overproduction.

Waiting refers to a person or a machine being idle due to lack of information or material required to continue operation. Halting production on a machine for out-of-stock state is a prevalent form of Waiting waste.

Neglected Resources refers to neglecting, ignoring, or misusing the best resources available for the application at the time. This represents the underutilization of talents, state-of-the-art equipment, and advanced technology.

In my early career days as an Improvement Specialist, I developed dozens of Microsoft Office Access and Excel VBA-enabled macros. Such scripts converted manual accounting processes into automatic steps finishing in seconds. Failure to leverage existing resources is widespread in most workplaces.

Transportation is the unnecessary movement of material or information that does not add value to meet the customer’s requirements. For instance, frequent movement of raw materials from storage areas to the point of production is a common, unfavorable practice in the manufacturing industry.

Inventory represents material (raw or finished) or initial information in a queue. This is usually depicted in piles of finished goods in a warehouse made without customers’ orders. In the shop floor, inventory takes the form of work-in-progress (WIP) of partially finished goods awaiting processing by downstream processes.

Motion refers to unnecessary movement by people in a process. Excessive bending, walking, reaching, or any form of human body movement is considered a wasteful effort in the workplace. For that, meticulous facility planning should be practiced when setting up the layout and sequence of process steps to minimize motion.

Extra-processing is committed if more features, information, or work are provided than what is required by the customer. This form of waste is usually exhibited in excessive, unnecessary packaging of products. It can also be incurred when additional, unplanned process steps are performed to meet requirements.

In manufacturing, re-packing old products stored in a warehouse, to remove dirt or replace worn out packaging, is extra-processing that was unneeded in the first place.

Root Cause Elimination as a Next Step

Recognizing the eight types of waste is one critical step in the Lean transformation endeavor. Trimming the fat in any process requires lean professionals to identify each waste type, then to measure it as a baseline for improvement.

Although critical, recognizing waste without eliminating its root causes dooms the improvement efforts to failure. Hence, the next critical step in the Waste Elimination Process is identifying and eliminating the root causes of waste.

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