The 8 Types Of Waste in Lean Manufacturing

There are several key methods to improve productivity but when we fixed input, all the resources, processes, and environment as it is in that case very difficult to improve productivity. Now a day’s people are focused on smart work so one of the very effective ways of improving productivity in any sector is to reduce 8 types of waste from processes.

Now the question is what is the waste available in production processes, in a broader view 7 types of waste are available in production processes & recently added one new waste, in this article, we will discuss 8 types of waste each one of them in detail & also you able to download pocket guide template as well as excel template to measure waste.

This article helps you to give the direction of process optimization but after the waste identification review certain steps to improve ground or shop floor conditions like 6 ‘S’, Kaizen, Poka Yoke, SMED implementation, and many more.

What do you learn from this article?

• History
• The 8 Types of waste
• Pocket guide to understanding each waste.
• Practical examples of each waste.
• Individual waste detail understanding.

History of the 8 types of waste

• All types of waste term connected with the lean manufacturing philosophy which is developed in 1950 and 1960.
• First implemented lean manufacturing in the Toyota production system & initially start with minimizing waste of production processes.
• The key contributor to the developed Toyota production system is Kiichiro Toyoda and Taiichi Ohno.

The 8 Types of Waste in Lean Manufacturing

The basic purpose to implement lean manufacturing is to identify and minimize waste. Waste elimination is not practically possible but try to identify possibilities to minimize it. Lean manufacturing suggests employees train their minds and eyes to see waste from processes. To optimize any process with the help of minimizing waste.

Waste is summarized way in short cut (TIMWOODU)

Before we proceed further just understand what individual waste is in one-liner sentences (pocket guide) as per mention below.

1. Transportation Waste.

Definition.

Transportation is basically the movement of material from one place to another place. There are several ways to transfer material listed as manual movement, movement with material handling equipment, material transfer in a conveyor, material movement in a truck Etc.

Before going to understand the transportation concept in detail we require to understand why transportation is considered waste.

Review any activity from the customer’s perspective, basically, all the processes are divided into two types VA – Value added and NVA – Non-value added. All types of waste are non-value-added activities from the customer’s perspective.

Examples of transportation waste: –

• Material movement production shop to inspection stage.
• Material movement is stored in the production stage.
• Material transfer by forklift from truck to the material storage area. Etc.
• Finish material movement from factory to distributors or retailers.

2. Inventory Waste

Inventory is a material or goods which can be stored in a form of Raw materials, Work-in-progress, and finished goods. Basically, there are three types of inventory as per listed above. Out of all waste of lean manufacturing majority of liquidity blocking entities is inventory, if we focused to minimize inventory level within or without scope then it will be a major impact on the cash-to-cash cycle as well as revenue generation. Meanwhile, one thing to keep in mind I am talking about inventory reduction in the sense of overall inventory – (For Example – if you minimize Raw material inventory and material to be transferred to finished goods but not dispatched to the customer then it will be no impact on cash to cash and revenue generation cycle.

Examples of inventory waste: –

• Storage of 150 MT Sugar Bags in the warehouse for a future order. (Inventory of finished goods)
• 126 Nos electric motor body waiting for assembly in assembly shop. (Inventory of work-in-progress)
• Material to be purchased when order received and order to be delayed of 6 months, then material to be delayed for processing. (Inventory of raw material)

3. Motion Waste

Motion is a manpower movement within a workstation or premises. Basically in a broader view manpower movement looks for minor waste but when we going to count & capture on systematically way then we realize, minor activities biggest impact on our output. There are several ways to monitor motion waste as per listed below.

Examples of motion waste: –

• For Any Retail shop, the shop owner continuously moves within the shop to take different items & give them to different customers – think about the shop owner’s movement per day and think about when we reduce, what are the time delay saving customer waiting.
• Manpower movement from one department to another department for finding needed items.
• Manpower movement within the workstation.

4. Waiting for waste

Waiting means delay. In a simple way try to understand one machine working as per its targeted working cycle and due to insufficient material issue or manpower absenteeism issue machine is stopped, in this case waiting due to material or manpower. In overall project delay waiting due to material & manpower is a major impact parameter. If any production process line balancing is not perfectly matched with each & every workstation attached in line, then the waiting waster will be visible in line.

Examples of waiting waste: –

• The machine is waiting for the material.
• Manpower waiting in store for a consumable item.
• Material is waiting for processing at the workstation.

5. Over-production waste

Over-production waste is defined as producing more than the customer’s requirement. In short, we produce & increase the inventory level of finished goods for future requirements. When no load conditions happened in small-scale industries basically they started producing products and convert into finished goods inventory for future requirements per lean manufacturing principle of one of the waste suggests that its wrong approach to producing products.

Examples of over-production waste: –  

• One of the bearing companies produces bearing of 5000 quantities without customer requirement.
• Ice cream companies produce ice cream without expecting future demand.

6. Over-processing waste

Over-processing is basically we add more value to products without customers’ requirements. In some cases, customers are happy with our products but internally increasing the cost of processing to produce more than they want. In the practical environment, there are so many processes to produce goods & services but actually, we look into the detail of each and every process, we found some of the processes are not required & continuously doing extra or over-processing.

Examples of over-processing waste: –

• The car manufacturing industry provides painted coating more than customer requirements in some areas of the car due to each and every car being painted on a manual basis.
• From the electroplating method, coating one product to another product increases more than customer requirements.

7. Defect Waste

Defects are defined as producing products that are not satisfied with customer requirements, also known as rework & rejection. Defects are generated by errors in machines or equipment, manpower error,s and system errors. Defects waste consider internally as well as externally also if defects are found externally the majority impact on cost. One of the important aspects of defects is to perfect capturing defect data as well as monitor the cause of each defect.

Examples of defect waste: –

• Bad products – with respect to unfulfilling customer requirements.
• Person A found the bad quality of consumer products at home – that is defects from external customers defects.
• Defects found at dispatch stage – that is internal customer defects.

8. Un-utilize human talent waste

Unutilized human talent means each manpower has a different skill to perform the work. The key role of management is to identify skills of human assets & utilize in to perform work. Now a day many organizations have issues identifying the skill set of human assets & proper allocation of work based on skill or talent.

Review certain listed steps to utilize human talent.

• Make a structural plan to identify human talent & developed skill Metrix.
• Give a task to be performed based on the skill Matrix.
• Set the targeted goal and plan into smaller activities.
• Plan to structural review mechanism of humans.
• Identify the major gap between goal & actual performance.
• If any gap is found – structural root cause analysis.

Review the attached excel template for 8 types of waste identification from different processes and also review the attached examples for how to use the excel template.