Many companies operating in the Lean culture, but also those training and consulting companies, define a different number of main wastes occurring in processes. Most often in one publication/article the number 7 or 8 appears, but it happens that 9, 10 and more are mentioned.
There is almost complete agreement on the first eight wastes, and they are:
1. Overproduction – producing faster, earlier and more than needed, which leads to
ahead of schedule orders.
2. Excessive inventory – stocks result directly from overproduction and waiting (products
finished, work in progress, raw materials):
– they cost as frozen funds
– they increase the delivery time
– they take up the area of the factory
– delay/make it impossible to identify issues
– involve people and transport
3. Waiting – unnecessary expectation of the product in the process of adding value or
waiting for machines or people for the necessary materials, tools, instructions or information necessary to perform the work.
4. Unnecessary transportation – from the point of view of added value in production, transport is always a loss.
It causes damage, requires the provision of space, transport carts and employees to operate them.
5. Excessive movement – any unnecessary physical effort performed by the employee during the performance of work
(walking, reaching for objects, bending down, moving from place to place).
6. Deficiencies (defects) and their repair – defects in the product may require alterations or, even worse, they may lead to product scrapping.
Usually, defective work returns to re-production, which costs valuable time.
7. Redundant processing – any activity that is not necessary for the production of the product
or services with the parameters and quality level required by the client.
8. Underutilization of employees potential - working below capacity. Possessing unique competences, knowledge, rights that the company does not use, not listening to ideas, suggestions of employees, wasting the chance to improve the process, avoid
losses
Experts also see the following losses:
9. Design losses – too many product functions (for which the customer does not want to pay), inflated tolerances, long implementation times and delayed projects.
10. Excessive wear – materials, energy, utilities, environmental losses.
11. Blaming – effort spent finding the culprit (instead of focusing on on identifying the problem,
finding the root cause and its elimination).
12. Searching and explaining – making irrelevant decisions, "foaming", searching for documentation, explaining problems.
13. Missed investments – purchase of machinery and equipment not adapted to the requirements of the process (inflexible, too complicated, difficult to operate and maintain, etc.).
As you can see, I managed to describe 13 losses, and this is probably still not all.
What are your most common losses?
Many companies operating in the Lean culture, but also those training and consulting companies, define a different number of main wastes occurring in processes. Most often in one publication/article the number 7 or 8 appears, but it happens that 9, 10 and more are mentioned.
There is almost complete agreement on the first eight wastes, and they are:
1. Overproduction – producing faster, earlier and more than needed, which leads to
ahead of schedule orders.
2. Excessive inventory – stocks result directly from overproduction and waiting (products
finished, work in progress, raw materials):
– they cost as frozen funds
– they increase the delivery time
– they take up the area of the factory
– delay/make it impossible to identify issues
– involve people and transport
3. Waiting – unnecessary expectation of the product in the process of adding value or
waiting for machines or people for the necessary materials, tools, instructions or information necessary to perform the work.
4. Unnecessary transportation – from the point of view of added value in production, transport is always a loss.
It causes damage, requires the provision of space, transport carts and employees to operate them.
5. Excessive movement – any unnecessary physical effort performed by the employee during the performance of work
(walking, reaching for objects, bending down, moving from place to place).
6. Deficiencies (defects) and their repair – defects in the product may require alterations or, even worse, they may lead to product scrapping.
Usually, defective work returns to re-production, which costs valuable time.
7. Redundant processing – any activity that is not necessary for the production of the product
or services with the parameters and quality level required by the client.
8. Underutilization of employees potential - working below capacity. Possessing unique competences, knowledge, rights that the company does not use, not listening to ideas, suggestions of employees, wasting the chance to improve the process, avoid
losses
Experts also see the following losses:
9. Design losses – too many product functions (for which the customer does not want to pay), inflated tolerances, long implementation times and delayed projects.
10. Excessive wear – materials, energy, utilities, environmental losses.
11. Blaming – effort spent finding the culprit (instead of focusing on on identifying the problem,
finding the root cause and its elimination).
12. Searching and explaining – making irrelevant decisions, "foaming", searching for documentation, explaining problems.
13. Missed investments – purchase of machinery and equipment not adapted to the requirements of the process (inflexible, too complicated, difficult to operate and maintain, etc.).
As you can see, I managed to describe 13 losses, and this is probably still not all.
What are your most common losses?
