Sinbad and The Seven Wastes

Following on from yesterday’s post, briefly explaining the concepts of continuous improvement processes and Kaizen, I feel I should expand on a few things. As I mentioned in my previous post, I’ve been doing a lot of research into various subjects and, as you might imagine, it’s a lot to remember. Yesterday’s post was a very short explanation of Kaizen and so today I’d like to test my memory by discussing what I can remember of… The Seven Wastes (to be said in the most dramatic voice you can muster). In Kaizen, or Lean, or TPS, or any of that jazz, actions can be split into two groups: things that add value, and things that don’t add value. The latter can be summed up using what are referred to as the seven wastes. I now present, for your reading pleasure, my summary of… The Seven Wastes (go on, do the voice).

Transport

Transport is the first waste. This is any needless conveyance of objects; for example: when a manufacturer has a warehouse to store the raw materials needed for production. This means that materials need to be transported from the supplier to the warehouse, and then from the warehouse to the factory, rather than transporting the raw materials directly from the supplier to the factory. On a smaller scale, it’s a bit like buying a massive load of house supplies and putting them in the garden shed until you’ve used up the stuff in the house, and then moving it all from the shed to the fridge and cupboards. ‘But manufacturers need to keep a large stockpile of raw materials ready to turn into a finished product; they can’t keep it all on-site.’ I hear you cry. Well, read on.

Inventory

Inventory is the second waste and refers to the unnecessary stockpiling of things such as raw materials. On a large scale, the warehouse mentioned in the previous paragraph is a good example. Raw materials should be coming into the factory as and when they are required for production. A smaller scale example would be where a factory worker takes a handful of bolts and puts them down next to him, when he only needs one at that particular time. By pulling out a handful of bolts, he’s just cluttering his area with needless crap that would get in the way and potentially damage whatever he’s working on. At home this would be like making a pile of toast by first tipping the entire sliced loaf all over the kitchen counter. The bread would be in the way when you wanted to take the toast out and butter it, and it would get pushed around, break apart, and generally pick up crap from the kitchen top. And no one wants to eat an entire loaf’s worth of toast after it’s been used to clean the kitchen.

Motion

Motion is the third waste and relates to any extraneous movements required to get the job done. An example of this would be if a factory worker had to walk ten feet to a draw of bolts every time he needed one (in that case he could be excused for taking a handful with him) instead of simply having a supply of bolts at his workstation when he needed them. At home this is like keeping a supply of tea bags in the cupboard on the other side of the kitchen instead of in a jar next to the kettle. In manufacturing, this can be taken to even greater extremes such as when drilling a row of holes. In this case, when moving the drill from one hole to the next, a worker/machine may be trained/programmed to only pull the drill far enough away from the material to allow it to be moved to the next drill point, rather than lifting the drill completely off the surface and replacing it at the next drill point.

Waiting

Waiting is the fourth waste, and is fairly self explanatory. Time is money, and you don’t want people sitting around waiting for tools or materials. You also don’t want machines sitting around doing nothing while people potter around preparing the next batch of whatever to go through. How often do you just sit and watch the toaster toasting or the kettle boiling? If your answer is “All the time” or even “Occasionally”, then I’m sorry to say it, but Kaizen thinks you’re a bum.

Overproduction

Overproduction is the fifth waste, and is again fairly self explanatory. If someone asks a manufacturer for 50 cars, and the manufacturer makes 100 cars, they might be able to sell the extra 50 cars to someone else but ultimately it’s a waste of time, money, and resources. At the very least, the manufacturer would need to find a place to store the cars which takes us back to inventory waste. If your wife, girlfriend, houseguest or whoever asks for a cup of tea, you don’t go and make five, then come back and say “I’ve made a few more there if you want them.” You’d get a funny look to say the least.

Over-processing

Over-processing is the sixth waste and refers to any action beyond that which is required by the client. Something like taking the time to polish every little nut and bolt inside an engine to a high shine would be over production; it fails to add value for the end customer because most customers will never see the inside of the engine. Obviously cleaning the components to the point at which they can do their job is important, but no more than that. It would be like measuring the precise amount of water and milk that you put into a cup of tea, making sure it’s at exactly the right temperature, then weighing the sugar and gently stirring it in to then be carefully transported to the plumber who will down it and hand you a bill of £50 for looking at your broken shower and saying “I’ll have to order a part from Mars and then come back and renovate your bathroom for a month.” Plumbers don’t deserve your tea; give them hot dishwater and milk.

Defects

Defects are the seventh and final waste. Defects basically refer to any time someone messes up the product they’re working on, and it has to be repaired or even scrapped and production started from scratch. This would be like when Bobby Spam Hands manages to drill a hole the size of a grapefruit through the fuselage of a plane only to find that the half inch bolt it was intended for seems to “move around a bit” in the hole.

So there you have it; the seven wastes in seven delicious bite-sized paragraphs. You may notice I’ve highlighted the first letter of each waste, and the more observant of you will possibly have realised they spell out TIM WOOD, a handy little mnemonic if I do say so myself. As my girlfriend quite diligently queried, after reading my notes on the whiteboard in my office; who is TIM WOOD? I don’t know. Who’s ROY G BIV? I hope it has been as educational for you to read as it was for me to write, and even more entertaining.

Kaizen: An Introduction

As my girlfriend would no doubt tell you, I always find it easier to learn things by trying to teach them to other people (just ask her about neodymium magnets, how 3D TV works, or pretty much anything to do with PCs if you don’t believe me). So with that in mind, I’ve decided to write a brief post on just one of the things I’ve been researching over the past couple of weeks. Hopefully it’ll be informative and, if possible, entertaining, but I’m not making any promises. At the very least, my girlfriend will be spared the lectures and allowed to fill her brain with things she really cares about, like ‘everything there is to know about Columbo’.

I was recently asked if I knew what Kaizen was. While I recognised the word I wasn’t familiar enough with it to supply a definition, so when I got home later that day I decided to look it up.

The term Kaizen means 'change for the better', and comes from the Japanese kai; meaning change, and zen; meaning good. Kaizen is a form of continuous improvement process. A continuous improvement process, or CIP, is the process of improving a product, service or process through constant repeated iteration. It’s a bit like at home, if you ever cook the same recipe on a regular basis you might find that you make small improvements to it every so often, adding a little salt or trying slightly different vegetables. You might also find that you find ways to cut down on the preparation time by preparing some things while others cook, or saving on washing up by cooking everything in one pan instead of two or three. By tweaking the different variables, you can improve the efficiency of the process(cooking) and the quality of the final product (food). The basic process of CIP is looking at what you’re doing and then identifying, reducing, and removing any action that negatively impacts the product, process, or service. The other key thing to remember is that CIP is about constant tiny steps rather than giant alterations.

Kaizen appears to be a very popular and effective form of continuous improvement process and is recognised as a key factor in the success of many Japanese and American companies, most notably Toyota, who developed their own Toyota Production System (TPS) based on Kaizen. Kaizen and TPS are also related to ‘lean manufacturing’ which basically sees anything that doesn’t add value for the end customer (the person buying the service/finished product) to be a waste. There is so much more detail I could go into, but for the sake of brevity, I'll leave that for future posts.

I love all this because, despite what many people might think about me, I can be a bit of a perfectionist and a pedant. Unfortunately, I can also be quite lazy, and although I never compromise on quality, I’m always looking to find more efficient ways to do things. Without wanting to turn into some kind of OCD robot, I’ve already started to find myself looking at ways I can implement ideas from Kaizen and Lean in my everyday work and home life. I’m walking a fine line now, but I don’t think it’s too ridiculous to move the teabags, kettle, and mugs to the same part of the kitchen, do you? Only time will tell just what effect this has on me but it seems to have worked for others so far, so I’m not worried, just as long as my housemates remember to put the cheese grater back on the shadow board.