In the T.P.S, Ohno identified seven types of waste that do not add value to the customer. The wastes were categorised to assist employees in systematically identifying and eliminating them. John Krafcik coined the term “Lean manufacturing” in the late 1980s. It was then popularised in the West as the TPS principles. In their 1990 book “The Machine That Changed the World,” Womack, Jones and Daniel Roos elaborated on “lean.” A fundamental concept of lean management is the seven wastes.
Although lean thinking was initially adapted to manufacturing, it has now been adopted by healthcare, software development, and other industries. As a result of this broad adoption, various lean methodologies have emerged, such as Lean Six Sigma and Agile. Continuous improvement, also known as Kaizen, is a critical element of TPS and lean thinking, which involves identifying and eliminating waste, improving processes, and enhancing customer value. In recent years, waste has acquired new dimensions due to a focus on sustainability. Environmental impacts and integration of sustainable practices increasingly influence organisations’ lean strategies. Lean thinking is based on clearly understanding the seven wastes, which can boost efficiency, lower costs, and enhance customer value. These wastes continue to influence a company’s evolution and adaption to lean principles.
As a customer-focused approach to lean, the seven wastes (or “Muda” in Japanese) are viewed from the perspective of a company’s customers. An activity that adds little value to the product or service is considered a waste.
The seven wastes are as follows:
Transportation: In transportation, materials or products are moved between processes unnecessarily, such as distances travelled, handling, and storage. These processes enhance little product value.
Inventory. Inventories can include raw materials, work-in-progress, and finished goods, tying up capital and storage space.
Motion: Adding unnecessary motion to a product adds no value.
Waiting: “waiting” refers to holding back resources (people, equipment, or materials). It includes waiting for materials, information, approvals, or machine repairs.
Overproduction.: If too much is produced, excess inventory can result in obsolete or damaged products, leading to potential waste.
Overprocessing: During overprocessing, unnecessary work is done to meet customer requirements. Material expenditures, unnecessary steps, and quality violations fall under this category.
Defects: A defect is a product that meets quality standards but needs to be reworked or causes customer dissatisfaction. Resolving defects can improve customer satisfaction and loyalty.
Teams can reduce transportation waste by using collaboration tools such as digital boards (such as Jira and Trello) and communication platforms (such as Slack and Microsoft Teams) to minimise the physical movement of documents. Co-locating teams through videoconferencing can be even more cost-effective. Reducing unnecessary travel costs can raise the team’s sense of capability and control. Just-in-time development, delivering only what is needed when needed, and Kanban practices for limiting work in progress (W.I.P) are effective ways to minimise inventory waste. Continuous integration helps prevent the building up of large amounts of unintegrated code through regular integration and testing.
Having an efficient workspace is crucial to reducing motion waste. This can be achieved by designing workplaces that minimise unnecessary movement and organising remote teams’ digital workspaces well. Additionally, task boards can facilitate assignment and visualisation of work, making it easier for team members to locate information. Waiting waste can be minimised using short, timed iterations (sprints) to deliver incremental value frequently. This approach allows the team to gather feedback or release sooner and feel a sense of progress and accomplishment. Creating cross-functional teams to accomplish tasks without external dependencies reduces waiting times and keeps the team motivated.
The agile process requires frequent involvement of customers and stakeholders to ensure the team is building the needed features but not overproducing ones that may not be used. To ensure that high-value items are delivered, the product backlog should be continuously refined and prioritised, giving the team a clear sense of purpose and connection to the project’s goals. Clearly defining “done” is essential to avoid unnecessary steps and excessive-quality that adds no value. To ensure that only necessary work is done, a minimal viable product (M.V.P) is developed to meet customer needs. After gathering feedback, the M.V.P is expanded to include all the features the customer asks for. Last but not least, test-driven development (T.D.D) can help reduce defects by catching them early on in the development process. Regular retrospectives help identify and address defects’ root causes and continuously improve processes. Automated testing makes it easy to identify defects and ensure that improvements do not introduce new problems.
A team that embraces agile principles can avoid the seven wastes. These principles help teams become more efficient, deliver value, and continuously improve.
