by Lee Fried, on 11 Jan 2012 08:04 am
Uncategorized
Seeing Waste
One of the most powerful aspects of Lean is that it teaches team members to view their processes through a new lens. It teaches us to understand and seek out waste and it requires us to question “why” things are done the way they are done. Whether it is at work or living my life I have learned to see waste and thus opportunities everywhere. One of my favorite experiences is when cross-functional teams come together and walk the process. It does not take long for them to start asking each other “why do you do that”, because “your team needs it”, “really we have been doing that for years”; “oohhh.”
Having the ability to see waste can also be a challenge, because it can quickly lead to frustration. The more opportunity you see the more you can become impatient with how quickly things change. While impatience can be a good thing it can also lead to bad behavior and bad outcomes. I have seen many leaders become frustrated with their teams, because they were not able to “see the opportunities” that the leader could see.
It is important to always take the mindset that things are how they are, it is not anybody’s fault, and now how can you help coach/teach others to see the waste and improve the process? Leaders have to realize that often for many years team members have worked very hard in often wasteful processes. Over time unnecessary work can seem to those doing it like very useful work. All of us confuse activity for value. The trick is teaching people, in a constructive way to step away from the process and to question the process.
Just last week I walked a process with a team where an administrative worker had been manually entering data to support a downstream process that ceased to exist over a year prior. The change had never made it back upstream and the activity was for nothing. This presented a great opportunity to redeploy this effort, but also presented a very sensitive situation. Nobody likes their work to be labeled waste nor do they want to do wasteful work. The leader did a wonderful job in handling the situation and ensuring that the outcome was constructive. Yet, they could have chosen to be frustrated or critical thus ensuring the future waste will remain undiscovered.
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on 12 Jan 2012 at 6:29 am 1.Wesley Connell said …
The last paragraph of your post resonates with me the most. No one likes o be told what they have been doing for some prolonged period of time is waste or wasteful.
One issue that always seems to come up after a kaizen event or training workshop is that employees get fired up to make improvements in their area but their ideas and energies are dampened by management apprehensive of change and relinquishing power to employees.
I see this scenario as one of the biggest wastes. Management has enough understanding to bring in trainers to educate but not enough to empower employees. This is the 8th waste, under-utilization of employees.
on 18 Jan 2012 at 6:56 am 2.Chris said …
Well this is interesting, I have started a new company just 2 months ago and they are so far from lean it is unbelievable. I see tons of waste and the frustration has set in with me. But I am remaining calm cool and collective. I am no longer in a managers role but back to a manufacturing Eng position (job was much closer to home)I am having to explain takt time and waste to my own boss who kind of knows about lean but doesn’t think that lean works.
I see waste everywhere. I just recently had two meetings on how I want to run a new line in order to reduce waste. They planned on tackling the new production lines by over producing 3 days a week and shutting down for 2 and moving people all over.
The sad part is the only reason I was able to have it my way is the plant manager is also the controller. And when I showed the Direct Labor savings of running it LEAN he jumped all over that. Only because of the dollar figure not because of the principle. I have a LOT of work to do here. Which is one of the reasons I also took the position. I knew I could easily justify my position with cost savings and lean reductions in waste here.
But the culture is SO FAR out from it, that is going to be much harder then I thought…. Love your Blog have followed it for years now. Please keep up the hard work on the blog I have gained so much from it.
on 18 Apr 2012 at 8:20 pm 3.Chris H said …
Great article thank you for sharing.
The ability to see waste is a great skill to learn and is often over looked.
Good luck to Chris in his new job, it sounds like you have your work cut out.
Showing the wastes as a dollar figure is a good way to motivate management. As all to often they are not interested in the principals. They employ you for that.
After demonstrating the principals lead to savings, management is usually more supportive.
on 08 Jun 2012 at 8:45 pm 4.Junaid said …
A simple story to help his team understand Lean.
“Once I visited in a butcher shop and ask the sale man please give me fresh boneless meat without any fat, he offer me a meat which he called “LEAN” I ask him why he called it lean, he replay because lean is without waste”. This interpretation is helping us to easy understand what is lean manufacturing? “Lean means manufacturing without waste”.