Lean Manufacturing: How to Address the Eight Types of Waste
Waste can take many forms in the manufacturing process, but at its core, waste is anything that does not provide value to the customer. It drives up costs and hinders a company's competitiveness in the market, which is why lean manufacturing can be a game-changing approach to your manufacturing processes.?
What is Lean Manufacturing?
Lean manufacturing, or lean production, is a set of best practices that focus on maximizing customer value by eliminating waste, where “waste” refers to anything that is a nonvalue-add during a process or effort when pursuing an objective.
The concept was first introduced to the manufacturing industry by Henry Ford in the early 1900s, and later refined in the Toyota Production System by Kiichiro Toyoda and others of Toyota Motor Corporation shortly after World War II. Currently, there are eight "wastes" associated with this methodology. Identifying wastes can help you conceptualize ways to streamline your production.
8 Wastes of Lean Manufacturing
Toyota identified seven types of waste, with the eighth type of waste added in the 1990s. They are also known as the “TIMWOODS Lean Manufacturing Wastes,” with the TIMWOODS acronym outlining the 8 types of waste:
1. Transportation
The only movement of product that adds value is when it moves to a customer. Unnecessary transportation increases wear and tear on people and equipment. Strategically positioning personnel, equipment, materials, and products to reduce travelling distance can effectively reduce waste in transportation.
2. Inventory
Inventory costs money to store and handle. Time is wasted counting and moving inventory that is not enroute to a customer. Inventory not only includes goods but also customer backlog, unused files, and broken equipment that take up space. Space that is being used by unused inventory is considered wasted space.
3. Motion
Waste in motion includes all kinds of unnecessary movement of people or machinery. Walking back and forth to and from a workstation is an example of excess motion, as well as start-up time for machinery if the schedule is not optimized. Tasks or processes that require excessive motion should be evaluated and addressed.
4. Waiting
This issue derives from upstream processes. Designing those processes to ensure a continuous workflow or developing work instructions are two methods for remedying this issue.
5. Overproduction
Producing parts that people do not use is wasteful. Overproduction not only increases risk of ownership if the production becomes obsolete, but overproduced parts increase storage and transportation requirements. Some methods for reducing overproduction include using a Kanban system, ensuring rate of manufacturing stations is even, and reducing setup times to enable small batch flow.
6. Overprocessing
Overprocessing can come in the form of adding more features to a product than what is required, adjusting something that is already installed, or over engineering a solution. Some causes of over-processing are from not having clearly defined standards or specifications. To reduce overprocessing, it is important to have a clear understanding of the quality and quantity of work the customer desires.
7. Defects
Defective products are perhaps the costliest waste. Not only does an organization lose invested costs in a finished part, but additional material costs and resources are wasted reworking products to meet the customer's needs. Adhering to standards greatly reduces the risk of defects.
8. Skills
When companies get comfortable with processes because “that’s how we’ve always done it,” they lose out on innovations and risk suppressing employee contributions. Having a culture that recognizes and works with creative strengths of employees often results in increased problem solving from everyone involved.?
Lean Manufacturing: Examples and Practices?
Lean manufacturing practices are the actions a manufacturer takes to identify wastes and respond to them with better processes. Ultimately, this will lead to a stronger focus on customer value.?
Huyett Case Study: Lean Practices and Continuous Improvement?
At Huyett, we are continuously evaluating our workflows to weed out waste. It is an ongoing process that drives our commitment to excellence as customer demands, economies, workforces, and technologies are always changing. We asked our departmental experts about how they identify waste and develop new solutions to streamline their processes. While these solutions address current issues, they stem from a foundational, unified alignment towards continuous improvement.?
领英推荐
1. Transportation?
“Huyett has recently integrated the freight transportation management system (TMS). The TMS system has standardized how our distribution teams select the most efficient and cost-effective carriers for our customer’s LTL/FTL shipments. The system monitors our shipment invoices and ensures our customers and Huyett are being charged accurately, reducing wasted costs that might not otherwise be captured. It also standardizes our process for tracking LTL shipments, saving Huyett customer service representatives time and effort in helping our customers more effectively. This TMS can bolt on to our ERP, and we are considering this soon. Overall, the TMS is helping Huyett reduce wasted costs and efforts for our shipping departments and for our customers.” - Joe Brown, Operations Manager?
2. Inventory?
"Huyett has focused on continually increasing inventory accuracy, which helps weed out the waste of unused or unsold products taking space on our shelves. Over the last year, we have maintained a 99.0% Inventory Accuracy Rate. We’ve also made our process for tracking inventory quantity more efficient, which means accurate quantities of parts are on the shelf, ready to ship.” — Nick Wolff, Quality Assurance Manager?
3. Motion?
"At Huyett, we are constantly looking for continuous improvement opportunities to reduce wasted time and energy. Within our distribution system, warehouse leaders worked with our IT team to build a software application called Trip Creator. The software automatically builds “trips” through the warehouse for order pickers by warehouse zone and consolidates any like items by bin location. This software creation saved the warehouse leadership team hours of time every week building trips manually, while creating more efficient picking sequences for our order picking team members. Overall, this helped us to reduce wasted time for warehouse leaders and increase efficiencies within order fulfillment.” - Joe Brown, Operations Manager?
4. Waiting?
"When there's a bottleneck in our manufacturing process, we strip it down to its core function to make it as efficient as possible. We also identify any reasons that equipment might sit idle and solve those problems one at a time. We extensively cross train known bottlenecks to eliminate staffing as a cause for idle machinery. We maintain continuous workflows with detailed work instructions and robust problem-solving plans. Most importantly, we communicate quickly, clearly, and regularly so everyone knows what part they play and how to do their jobs well." — Jeremiah Van Doren, Production Manager
5. Overproduction?
"We've worked hard to eliminate this waste by developing detailed production schedules and investing in technology that helps us reduce scrap. Our interdepartmental relationship with our Sales team is also key; we keep up on current customer demand and communicate our production timing so our customers can depend on us to get their orders to them when they need them." — Jeremiah Van Doren, Production Manager?
6. Overprocessing?
“Our raw materials sourcing team ensures we have one of the largest and most complete inventories of cold drawn bright bar in the industry. This helps us avoid costly secondary machining operations, keeping cost and lead times low. When additional processing is necessary for highly customized parts, our experienced machinists (100+ years of industry experience) ensure the job is done right the first time.” — Jeremiah Van Doren, Production Manager?
7. Defects?
"We've improved our inspection system and added new technology that catches defects the human eye can't catch. This happens early on in the process to eliminate a buildup of issues. When we do have defects, we work through a 'nonconformant form' with the '5 Whys' method. This helps us address the root cause, so we aren't constantly fixing the same problems." — Jeremiah Van Doren, Production Manager?
8. Skills?
"We foster a culture that encourages people to contribute ideas and offers accessibility to professional development. In biweekly 1:1 meetings, employees are encouraged to provide open feedback to their manager, guided to set their own personal goals, and welcomed to ask for learning opportunities. Our managers are trained to recognize talent and innovation and channel it in a relevant direction. We encourage employees to speak up about their strengths and professional desires. As tools to guide that professional development, we have a published job bank with company-wide access to detailed job descriptions, a skills assessment form that allows an employee to develop their own skill set, and a personal development planning process that allows an employee to guide themselves through training, coaching, and guidance from their manager and cross-functional peer mentors." — Walker Hermann, Human Resource Generalist?
Company Culture
Lean manufacturing is not a single action or project, but a commitment to ongoing process improvement that stems from an innovative and humble company culture. Continuous improvement requires a company to critically evaluate its processes, expose areas of waste, and set benchmarks for performance to measure success. A deep understanding of a process and how it affects value to the customer provides the basis for employee training and coaching opportunities. These activities lead to more efficient workflows, higher employee engagement, and a company culture of excellence.
How to Implement Lean Manufacturing Practices
Before implementing lean manufacturing practices, there are a few things to keep in mind:
Once your company has committed to lean manufacturing, your approach to eliminating the eight types of waste should come from these five principles:
All In A Day's Work
Minimizing waste in the manufacturing industry is an iterative, never-ending process, but each day brings new opportunities. At Huyett, our standards are high, and we strive to consistently deliver the absolute best for all of our customers.
"Huyett continuously collects and monitors data and reviews our internal Key Performance Indicators (KPIs) to identify trends so corrections can be made to drive improvements in our organization and improve customer service. The continuous improvement mindset is ingrained deep within our organization. It is not an action we take; it's who we are." — Nick Wolff, Quality Assurance Manager?
Great article and insights Huyett!