Lean Wastes Overview

Lean Wastes

• Lean methodology identifies 10 types of waste: Transport, Inventory, Motion/Movement, Waiting, Overproduction, Overprocessing, Defects, Reprioritization, People Skills, Energy, and Digital Waste.
• Non-value-added activities are a significant component of waste.

Defining Waste

• Waste is categorized into specific types affecting all aspects of an operation, from physical materials to information flow.
• Key types of lean waste include transport, inventory, motion/movement, waiting, overproduction, overprocessing, defects, reprioritization, people skills, and energy.

Transport Waste

• Unnecessary movement of people, materials, documents, or information.
• Examples include travel to meetings, moving materials, transferring information between systems, and transferring information by hand or post.

Inventory Waste (Excess)

• Excess inventory that is not needed for current orders.
• This can lead to excess physical stock, excess customer applications, multiple unlinked information repositories, and duplication of information.

Motion (Excess) Waste

• Extra steps due to inefficient process layouts, defects, or overproduction.
• Poor product design, office layout, and needing to revisit clients are examples.

Waiting Waste

• Downstream process inactivity due to upstream delays.
• Examples are waiting for products, services, information, decisions, or access to resources.

Overproduction Waste

• Producing more than required or prematurely.
• Examples include producing unnecessary products and continuing production when demand is low.

Overprocessing Waste

• Extra operations like rework, reprocessing, or handling due to defects or excess inventory.
• Examples include correcting defects in products, services, or documentation as well as reworking or handling.

Defects Waste

• Products or aspects of service that don't meet specifications or customer expectations.
• Incorrect orders/deliveries, flawed products, and incorrect information are examples.

Reprioritization Waste

• Constant changing of priorities without proper allocation of resources.
• This occurs in projects affected by poor planning or project remediation.

People Skills Waste

• Not utilizing the full potential of employees.
• Poor leadership, ineffective meetings, and restrictive job descriptions are examples.

Energy Waste

• Waste that represents over 45% of process activities potentially consumes energy (light, heat, gas, oil, electricity, transport, brain power).
• Ineffective meetings also contribute.

Waste in Service Organisations/Digital Environments

• Excess bureaucracy, unnecessary complexity, misaligned incentives, excess information, inefficient use of technology, lack of standardization, unnecessary customization, and inadequate communication are wastes within service organizations and digital environments.

Wastes in the Digital Age

• Materials of the digital age (hardware, metaverse, online storage, energy production) contribute to waste.
• The internet itself is a vast accumulation of unoptimized, unstructured digital information.
• Psychological factors (anxiety, worry), the perceived need for new things (circular economy), and the question of whether all new technology is truly needed are part of this modern waste concept.