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The Impact of wastes in Lean Manufacturing

“The most dangerous kind of waste is the waste we do not recognize.”

-Shiego Shingo, leading expert on the Toyota Production System.

 



The purpose of writing this blog post is to equip the readers with the basic concepts in understanding the importance and benefits of identifying and eliminating wastes in Lean Manufacturing.

 

Impact of Wastes Elimination

The organizational Productivity and Profitability is linked with fulfilling customer’s need in cost effective manner. This task is accomplished through identification and elimination of wastes in the process, thus ensuring efficient workflow and sustained quality of products. This efficient workflow, reduces process time and ensure on time delivery to customers.

 

What is a waste in Lean Manufacturing?

Waste in Lean Manufacturing is a non-value added activity to the product. In other words, we can say that there’s no value addition to customers and they’ll not willingly pay for this non-value added cost.

 It’s also worthwhile to mention that without knowing or identifying problems, we cannot take remedial action. Now we understand it by example:

Treatment of a patient without proper diagnosis, is just playing with the quality of his life. In this situation, time and money spent by the patient is a waste and will not add value to his health.

  

Who is the pioneer in Lean Wastes?

We should be grateful to Mr. Tachii Ohno, (1912-1990) a Japanese Industrial Engineer. He was a pioneer in Lean Wastes (Muda). He introduced these Seven wastes in Lean Manufacturing: Defects, overproduction, Transportation, waiting, Inventory, Motion, and over processing. Later on 8th waste-non-utilization of Talent was added.

 

Eight wastes in Lean Manufacturing

Let’s now briefly explain these eight wastes in Lean Manufacturing:

 



1.   Defects- In the absence of proper operating standards and quality assurance procedures, defects within Production processes are inevitable. The defective Product needs rework to remove the defects. This rework activity incurs additional cost by using time, people, materials, tools and equipments.

2.   Overproduction- The impact of overproduction is negative in many ways. It’s the excess quantity being produced, that is not needed and is a wasteful activity. It causes unnecessary build up of Inventory and additional use of resources such as time, people, materials, tools and equipments.

3.   Transportation- This type of waste is a reflection of poor facility planning. Due to this reason, efficient workflow is affected. The excess movement of people, materials, products, tools, and equipments do not add value to Products. This unnecessary movement results in tiredness of people, damage of goods, space problems in warehouse, and time spent on these activities.

4.   Waiting- Waiting is an idle time waste. It occurs due to delay in activities within a process caused by uneven production flow, lack of proper communication, shortage of materials or parts, machine breakdown, and skilled workers waiting for machine functioning.

5.   Inventory- The unnecessary build up of inventory is a significant waste of Lean. It ties up working capital. Cost is involved due to additional use of time, people, materials, equipments, warehouse space and other related overheads. If there’s no further demand in the market, these stocks may become obsolete.

6.   Motion- Health and Safety are important factors in any organization. In the absence of proper task design, the waste in motion is inevitable. There’s unnecessary movement of information, people, materials, products, and equipments. More time and energy is used in these extra tasks which may create health issues. It may cause more absenteeism, and high rate of employee turnover.

7.   Overprocessing- It refers to doing extra work on a product, beyond customer’s specifications or requirements. This excess work incurs cost of time, people, materials, purchasing process and related documentations. All such activities do not add value to the product. It’s a waste in production process and affects efficient workflow.

8.   Non-utilization of Talent- This is a key waste of human capital. In organizations where employees are not empowered, their hidden potential is not exposed. The employee empowerment and proper training equips them with confidence and sense of ownership. These satisfied and motivated employees contribute towards enhanced productivity  and growth of the organization.

 

Summary

Identification and elimination of eight wastes in Lean Manufacturing, improves efficient workflow which reduces process time and ensures on time delivery to customers. Resultantly, value is added to customers that contribute towards organizational growth.

 The eight types of waste are: Defects, overproduction, transportation, waiting, inventory, motion, overprocessing, and non-utilization of talent.

 

About Me

My name is Munir Iqbal, I’m an entrepreneur. I’ve extensive knowledge in operations Management.

 

Comments

  1. Mohammad Faraz Khatri29 April 2021 at 11:39

    Worth reading!!
    Good going Sir.

    ReplyDelete
  2. kg29 April 2021 at 18:23

    Very impressive and showing your knowledge about the matter.

    ReplyDelete
  3. Munir Iqbal30 April 2021 at 15:48

    Thanks for your feedback.

    ReplyDelete
  4. Unknown2 May 2021 at 10:05

    Very nice.

    ReplyDelete
  5. Unknown2 May 2021 at 10:06

    Nice

    ReplyDelete
  6. Unknown2 May 2021 at 10:18

    That's great

    ReplyDelete
  7. Unknown2 May 2021 at 10:21

    Useful and professional approach.

    ReplyDelete
  8. Unknown6 May 2021 at 19:05

    This is interesting. I see living in Canada that manufacturing is lean and there is alot of emphesis on keeping things well orginized. Based on Toyota's JIT method; which i saw was a true endevour while visiting their plant. I saw that their vendors were located accross the street from their plant. Waste reduction, planned labour are just a few of their cost and waste management techniques.
    I think that in an economy like Pakistan's where the manufacturing sector does not have many facilities producing for entire continents the emphesis on waste management can play an important role in the upbringing and formation of a formal industrialized economy.
    For example, building up on tge 60's era SITE areas around major natural resourse areas and having minimal but productive laws in place for waste management such and refiening and disposing of hazardous environmental materials, energy production for major plants withing a certain vicinity. Transportation and highway ( major road GT road type) infrastructure based on the movements of goods. These things can also contribute to a more systemic mechinism to reduce waste and allow for the generation of jobs and incomes within societey.
    I also want to add that more and more industrialists need to be incentivised to follow Waste management protocols.

    ReplyDelete
  9. Munir Iqbal6 May 2021 at 22:01

    Thanks for your valuable feedback. Infact, lean thinking stems from TPS.

    ReplyDelete

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