Tips to Tackle The Seven
Deadly Wastes
By Rohan Tink
Original content located here.
This snippet is for example only.
How to prevent running over budget, over time and deliver value to
your customers.
Waste is the enemy of any process. By identifying and eliminating
it, you can transform your company into a Leaner, and ultimately, a more
profitable organization.
Many activities which are routinely performed in production
facilities add no value in the eyes of the customer. If these wasteful
activities can be identified and reduced, or eliminated, then workflow
and production capacity increases without an increase in costs for the
business. This combination of improved customer service and cost
competitiveness can significantly increase the profitability of the
business.
Without wasteful activities, you add value to products and services
by delivering to customers in the shortest possible timeframe, at a high
quality and at minimum cost. World class companies profit from the
knowledge that customers recognize and pay for value every time.
The Seven Wastes were first developed into a clear set of principles
and rules nearly 50 years ago by Toyota Chief Engineer, Taiichi
Ohno. The concepts recognize that waste drives high manufacturing cost
and that waste elimination is one of the most effective ways to increase
profitability in manufacturing.
To eliminate waste, it is important to look beyond the obvious
examples of rejected components or full waste bins. The Seven Wastes
recognize lost time, effort, cash flow and opportunity.
The Seven Wastes of Production:
- Over production
- Waiting
- Transportation
- Inventory
- Motion
- Over processing
- Defective Units
1. Over production
Over production involves producing goods over and above the amount
required by the market at a given time. This consumes extra raw
materials, labor and storage space, increasing the chance of damage
to goods, excess handling and builds production queues which extends
the lead time of goods on order. By limiting over production we can
reduce lead times significantly and improve production flexibility
and costs.
TIP: Over production can be avoided by using smaller batch
sizes.
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2. Waiting
Waiting involves periods of inactivity for people and
product. Production lead time is tied up in waiting and queuing for
the next sequence in the operation, typically when the flow of
material, and information, people or equipment is poor. In a ‘batch
and queue’ style process much of the time is attributed to waiting.
TIP: By improving material and information flow, optimizing
setups and changeovers and reducing the distance between work
centers, productivity increases as the manufacturing cost decreases.
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3. Inventory
There are many costs associated with holding excess amounts of
inventory. This includes the direct costs of raw materials, work in
progress (WIP) and finished goods stores, as well as extra handling
costs, increased space requirements, more paperwork and possible
product obsolescence.
TIP: To reduce inventory levels we can manufacture in small
batches and introduce ‘pull systems’ to link production to
consumption rates.
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4. Transportation/Materials handling
Transporting product between processes is often viewed as “just
part of the job”, however it adds no value from the customers’
perspective. Rather than improve the method of transportation the
focus should be on the minimising or eliminating it from the
process. Significantly, the number of material handling operations
is directly proportional to the likelihood of damage to a
product. Factory layouts are often the fundamental cause of excess
transportation.
TIP: When a factory layout is carefully planned, through the
use of mapping product flows and process relationship charts, it not
only reduces transportation waste but can also reduce WIP and time.
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5. Motion
The waste of Motion refers to any excessive movement by people or
machines. For example, walking to and from tool boxes to retrieve
items that could be stored at the point of usage, or bending to
retrieve commonly used tools from an uncomfortable location. In CNC
equipment cycles, sloppy programming can lead to the machine making
unnecessary returns to maximum elevation during traverses or slow
traverses even when not in contact with the work part.
TIP: Awareness of ergonomics (eg. bending, stretching) within
the process has direct economic benefits. Analyze and redesign jobs
with excessive motion with the involvement of plant personnel.
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6. Over processing
Many organizations fail to ask what the customer actually
values. As a result they perform work deemed unnecessary or even
detrimental. The most common examples of this is unnecessary
packaging, over-finishing parts, or specifying unnecessarily
accurate tolerances.
TIP: By determining what it is that the customer is seeking
and communicating this to staff with clear standards, inappropriate
processing can be eliminated.
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7. Defective Units
Processes not capable of producing the required specifications or
quality are an obvious source of waste. The idea is to focus on
preventing the occurrence of defects instead of finding and
repairing defects.
TIP: Quality is improved through the use of standard work,
training, 5S and continuous improvement tools.
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Every organization can benefit from a ‘Waste Hunt’. This involves
creating awareness and understanding of the Seven Wastes within a Blitz
team who identify and categorize wasteful activities that occur in the
workplace. Once identified, they develop an action plan to address the
most significant wastes and reduce or eliminate them altogether. Until
you take the time to stop and objectively analyze the operations, you
will never truly know how much opportunity exists. |