How do you align your waste elimination goals with your customer needs and expectations?

1 What is waste in kaizen?

Waste in kaizen is any activity, resource, or output that does not contribute to the value of the product or service for the customer. It can be categorized into seven types: overproduction, waiting, transportation, inventory, motion, overprocessing, and defects. These are also known as the seven wastes of lean manufacturing, or TIMWOOD. By identifying and eliminating these wastes, you can improve the quality, speed, and cost of your process, and deliver more value to your customers.

2 How to identify waste in kaizen?

The first step to eliminate waste in kaizen is to identify it. You can use various tools and techniques to do this, such as value stream mapping, process flow diagrams, gemba walks, 5S, and 5 whys. These methods help you to visualize and analyze your current state, and to find the root causes of waste. You can also involve your team members, customers, and suppliers in this process, and ask them for feedback and suggestions. The key is to look at your process from the customer's perspective, and to focus on what they value and expect.

3 How to eliminate waste in kaizen?

Once you have identified the waste in your process, you can start to eliminate it. You can use the PDCA cycle, or plan-do-check-act, to implement and evaluate your improvement actions. The PDCA cycle is a four-step method that helps you to plan your changes, test them on a small scale, measure the results, and make adjustments as needed. You can also use the kaizen blitz, or kaizen event, which is a short-term, intensive project that involves a cross-functional team working on a specific area or problem. The goal is to eliminate waste quickly and effectively, and to sustain the improvement.

4 How to align waste elimination goals with customer needs and expectations?

One of the challenges of waste elimination in kaizen is to align your goals with your customer needs and expectations. You do not want to eliminate something that your customer values, or to compromise on quality or service. To avoid this, you need to understand your customer's voice, or VOC, which is their feedback, preferences, complaints, and requirements. You can use tools such as surveys, interviews, focus groups, and customer journey maps to collect and analyze VOC data. You can also use tools such as quality function deployment, or QFD, which is a method that helps you to translate VOC into measurable and actionable goals for your process.

5 How to measure and monitor waste elimination in kaizen?

The final step of waste elimination in kaizen is to measure and monitor your progress and results. You need to have clear and relevant metrics and indicators that show you how much waste you have reduced, and how much value you have increased for your customer and your organization. You can use tools such as key performance indicators, or KPIs, which are quantifiable and specific measures of performance. You can also use tools such as dashboards, scorecards, and control charts, which are visual and interactive displays of data that help you to track and communicate your performance.

Waste elimination is a vital part of kaizen, and it can help you to achieve continuous improvement and customer satisfaction. By following the steps and tools mentioned in this article, you can identify and eliminate waste in your process, and align your goals with your customer needs and expectations. You can also measure and monitor your results, and celebrate your successes.

6 Here’s what else to consider

This is a space to share examples, stories, or insights that don’t fit into any of the previous sections. What else would you like to add?