Transportation Waste
Definition: the unnecessary act of taking or carrying someone or
something from one place to another
Office example: Movement of paperwork; multiple hand-offs of
e-data, unnecessary approvals, excessive email attachments, or
cc-ing people who don't really need to know.
CU Store example: transporting items from warehouse to store
to warehouse and/or back to another CU store.
Inventory Waste
Definition: Excess or unnecessary inventory.
Office example: Purchasing or making things before they are
needed: office supplies, items in an in-box, unread email, and all
forms of batch processing.
ODFS example: inventory in multiple locations causes confusion
about what we have, and so we often order unnecessary items.
Motion Waste
Definition: Extra or unnecessary physical
motion to perform a task or process.
Office example: Walking to a copier, printer, or
other machine; walking between offices; using
central filing; or adding attachments to an email
or cc-ing people who don't really need to know.
People Waste
Definition: Not fully engaging (or
misplacing) the talent of a team member
Office example: A person has knowledge
of a software program, but others don’t
know about or tap into that knowledge.
Waiting (delay) Waste
Definition: Any unnecessary waits or delays in a
process.
Office example: Slow computers, downtime
(computer, fax, phone), waiting for approvals, waiting
for customer information, or waiting for clarification
on (or correction of) work from earlier in the process.
Over-processing Waste
Definition: doing extra steps: i.e., doing more work than is necessary.
Office example: Inspections (instead of eliminating errors), re-entering data
into multiple information systems, making extra copies, generating unused
reports, and unnecessarily-cumbersome processes.
CU example: Group A scanned documents that a group B needed, too, but
group A didn’t want to share the scanned version of the document, causing
group B to have to redo the work.
Overproduction Waste
Definition: doing more work than is necessary or work that
was not requested.
Office example: Printing paperwork or processing an order
before it is needed: things can change, causing the work to
have to be re-done. Any processing that is done on a
routine schedule without considering current demand
Defect Waste
Definition: Rework or repairs to correct
mistakes: corrections take time and cause
frustration.
Office example: Data entry errors, invoice
errors, engineering change orders, design flaws,
employee turnover, and miscommunication.