I recently attended a seminar about applying the Lean process to your business.
If you have not heard of Lean, it is a topic worth studying, as it can result in saving your company many, many hours of otherwise wasted production time.
They identified eight types of waste which can occur in business:
1. Transportation
– Moving things more than necessary, or farther than required.
2. Inventory
– Obvious category of spending too much on inventory. Inventory is dollars transformed, so don’t invest in more than you need.
3. Motion
– Common example of this is having all the parts bins right next to your workers, so they have to move as little as possible to find the parts they need.
4. Waiting
– How much time do your workers spend waiting for other workers in your company, or workers in someone else’s company, or shipments to arrive?
5. Overproduction
– Making more than needed for your customers, just in case something goes wrong. This can usually be cut somewhat.
6. Overprocessing
– Making and performing more than you are being asked to you. This doesn’t mean you make shoddy products; it means you produce it according to spec.
7. Defects
– This can be dealt with through better team training.
8. Skill
– This goes beyond just doing the bare minimum and helping your workers to really excel and become professionals in their field.
Much of this relates to manufacturing and construction, but even as a software company I found many principles which were applicable to my company. It you would like to improve your processes and reduce waste, a lean workshop may be useful to you.