Muri: Overburdening People & Equipment

My career began in the US Army. One of my early assignments had to do with supply. At a supply school I heard the story of a post WWII Supply Sergeant in Hawaii. 

Using pack mules to carry their supplies, the sergeant's unit had undertaken a march up a local mountain. 

One of the mules lost it's footing and tumbled over the side. The enterprising Supply Sergeant, who was missing a number of pieces of expensive equipment, seized this tragedy as an opportunity to make up his shortages. He filed a report claiming that every missing item just happened to be on that mule.

The report got to the next higher headquarters where the sergeant's creativity was admired, and new shortages were added to the mule's fictitious load.

The report worked it’s way up the chain of command, each level adding new items. It was ultimately approved and the sergeant soon forgot about it.

Twelve years later, the now retired sergeant got a call from the Pentagon. The man on the other end of the phone said that he had processed the sergeant's report as a young man. He'd found the report incredulous, and made it a personal quest to calculate the weight of the mule's load. 

Over the years, he'd looked up the weight of each item on the mule's back. All the while, keeping track of the sergeant. "That mule," he told the sergeant, "was carrying the equivalent of three automobiles. It's little wonder it succumbed under the load." 

Good laugh, and a classic case of "overburdening," but sometimes we unknowingly do the same kind of things to our employees and equipment. That type of "overburden" (of people and equipment) is a form of waste, referred to at Toyota as Muri. 

In the Japanese language, Muri can be translated as overly burdensome, unreasonable, impossible, beyond one's power or as too difficult.

Let me give you another story that illustrates a different aspect of this Muri: this time, the human burden.

The summer between high school and college, my son joined a company that used college students to paint houses. One house had a third story gable. The company had provided no scaffolding and the crew's tallest ladder only reached two stories. Undeterred, these young men tied a one-story ladder atop the two-story ladder and one of them climbed to the top to finish the gable.

You could look at this as a story of Yankee ingenuity, but really, it is a classic case of Muri. The employer overburdened its employees, failing to provide proper tools, while keeping the production expectations the same. In doing so, they risked the life & limb of at least one employee.

Here are a few other examples:

Your design tolerances call for +/- 0.005 inches, even though your part doesn’t need anything closer than ?.” Besides, those tolerances are beyond the capability of your equipment. The only way to achieve those tolerances is to lavish attention on the part, adding an additional 40 minutes of labor. The result? Your is part unnecessarily difficult to manufacture ... and more expensive. Muri.

Your construction company has a 5 ton pickup, but routinely uses it to carry significantly heavier loads. You are constantly replacing brakes and shocks on it. Muri.

Your procurement policy requires that everything, including stationary items, be sourced only from “approved suppliers.” Meanwhile, the identical items can be purchased for 12% less from an online supplier.  Muri.

It's easy to see how Muri contributes to physical waste and excessive cost, yet rarely do we examine the human cost of overburdening employees. Consider:

A supervisor assigns a reasonable amount of work to an employee, but unbeknownst to him, his boss also assigns the employee work.  Jointly, their assignments overburden the employee with:

• More work than she can complete
• The mental anguish of trying to achieve an unreasonable goal
• The fear of discipline if she doesn't make the goal, creates defects, or has an accident

Is it logical to assume that she would fear displeasing one or both managers? Can you see how she might fear the affect any adverse outcome's might have on her career?

Aside from the obvious, can you see how it could cause her to think that you don't talk to each other and that your leadership model is dysfunctional? Can you see how such thoughts tear at the fabric of your organization?

Finally, you have a piece of equipment that is due for an overhaul, but you also have a large backlog. You elect to keep the machine in service and to maintain your quality by holding your employees accountable for preventing machine-induced defects. Simultaneously, you hold them to a difficult daily quota. Again, mental anguish, burden. Muri.

These are all examples of Muri: overburdening your people or equipment. Can you see how each is a waste?

Questions? Comments?