Waste is everywhere! Before we get into this, I want to reframe this concept as being neither bad nor good. When we hear this word, we often immediately picture a huge pile of trash. We tend to think about waste as things that have no profitable use. Let’s think about waste instead as opportunities to improve.
This is a critical mindset shift when we’re talking about waste. If we can’t get there, we are likely to take inappropriate, unnecessary, or inapplicable action just to get rid of the waste. We might even turn a blind eye to it! If waste is actually opportunities, we can reframe our thinking to make space for critical assessment of each opportunity. This lets us identify which opportunities need to be taken advantage of first and which ones need to be left for later after we’ve addressed other things.
The concept of waste as opportunity is best described in Lean Manufacturing Principles. In this discipline, the Japanese word muda is often used. In our English lexicon, we have a great acronym – WORMPIIT – to help us identify opportunities that we might typically call waste:
- Waiting – Standing around until you have work to do
- Over-production – Making too much
- Rework – Doing the same work more than once
- Movement – Taking more trips than necessary to accomplish the task
- Processing – Excessive work with the same material
- Inventory – Too much inventory than can be processed, also known as WIP (Work In Progress)
- Intellect – Not using the brainpower of your people
- Time – Inefficiency in how you use the time allotted to you
If you look more into Lean, you’ll come across a few different waste acronyms. I personally like this one because it is so ridiculous that it helps me remember all the different kinds of waste. Please bear in mind that this is a high level overview of the 8 Wastes – if you want to learn more, click on the links in this post.
As you’re considering this, what kinds of waste jump out at you? If you’re in an office environment, you might have a lot of Processing waste happening around information – an example would be a massive email chain that confuses everyone on it. There’s valuable information in there, sure – but can anyone distill it?
Movement is a waste we often see in manufacturing, where we have production lines set up in a way that made sense…until we were actually making the product.
If you’re struggling to identify waste, here’s three questions that can help gain clarity:
- Is the customer willing to pay for it?
- Does it add value to the good or service?
- Is the activity done once?
Whatever the waste is we are looking at, it’s important to not jump to conclusions about what the best solution may be. If you identify with my Processing example above, you may be tempted to put some kind of rule around how email can be used. Don’t do it! First, gather information. One tool we can use for this is an RCA (Root Cause Analysis). The simplest way to perform an RCA is the 5 Whys – yes, you literally ask why at least five times, or until you get to the root cause of the waste. This will help you identify the actual opportunity rather than getting caught up in a side project that may or may not have an impact on the waste you identified.
Activity: Consider the 8 Wastes outlined above. Which ones do you see in your own work or that of your team? If you’re working with a team, could you work as a team to eliminate the waste you’re seeing? Make sure you include everyone in the discussion – the best way to not see any progress is to tell people how to change but fail to give them the opportunity to understand why the change is needed.