00:00Welcome to Unified Consulting Solutions, or UCS, where we simplify complexity and amplify performance.
00:06Have you ever had that feeling where your team is just constantly busy, but the project, it barely seems to move forward?
00:12Well, what if I told you that for most projects, that feeling is actually a fact, and that over half of all the effort is just waste?
00:20Today, we are going to hunt down that waste.
00:23Just think about that number for a second.
00:25The Lean Construction Institute found that in many, many cases, a staggering 57% of productive time is lost.
00:33That's more than half the day for every single person on your team spent on things that add zero value for the customer.
00:39So in this explainer, we're going to expose the hidden costs of this problem.
00:43We're going to name our enemy and then break down the eight types of waste using a really simple tool.
00:48We'll see how they're all connected and, you know, most importantly, how you can start fighting back.
00:53All right, let's get into it.
00:55First things first, before we can fix it, we have to appreciate just how big this problem is.
01:00This isn't just about money on a balance sheet.
01:02It's like a hidden tax on your timelines, your resources, and even your team's morale.
01:07Yeah, that 57%, it's a massive figure.
01:11And look, we're not just talking about scraps and a dumpster here.
01:14This is the invisible process-related waste.
01:17It's time, it's effort, it's lost opportunity.
01:20It's any activity that eats up resources but creates absolutely zero value for the customer.
01:25So to fight this kind of inefficiency, you first have to be able to see it and you have to be able to name it.
01:32In lean thinking, which, you know, came out of the Toyota production system, this enemy has a very specific name, Muda.
01:38Muda is a Japanese term and it literally just means waste.
01:42It's any task, any process, any material that doesn't actually add value.
01:47But what's really crucial to get here is that Muda is part of a larger, interconnected system of inefficiency.
01:54You see, Muda doesn't live in a vacuum.
01:56It's got partners, Mura, which is unevenness in the workflow, and Muri, which is overburdening your people and your equipment.
02:03So an inconsistent workflow, that's Mura, often forces people to rush and work overtime, that's Muri, which almost always leads to mistakes and wasteful shortcuts.
02:11And that's our enemy, Muda.
02:13Together, they're a system that just destroys project performance.
02:17Today, our mission is to hunt down Muda.
02:20So how in the world do you spot Muda on a busy project site or, you know, in a crowded office?
02:25Well, use a simple and really memorable acronym that acts as your field guide, downtime.
02:31Downtime stands for the eight types of waste and lean.
02:34This framework, it gives you a lens to look at your processes and immediately start spotting areas for improvement.
02:40So let's break them down one by one.
02:42All right, first up, D is for defects.
02:45This is probably the most obvious kind of waste.
02:51It's any energy you spend fixing something that should have just been done right the first time.
02:55Think about a traditional punch list.
02:57Our industry often just accepts that we'll let all these small defects pile up for this huge, costly scramble at the very end.
03:04A lean approach, though, it focuses on preventing defects from ever happening in the first place, not just managing them before the ribbon cutting.
03:12Next, O is for overproduction.
03:15And listen, this one is particularly dangerous.
03:18It's often called the mother of all wastes for a really good reason.
03:21It gives birth to almost all the others.
03:24As we're going to see in just a minute, making too much too soon sets off this disastrous chain reaction.
03:29Ah, waiting.
03:31This is one of the most frustrating wastes.
03:33It's the crew standing around waiting for a material delivery.
03:36It's a crane just sitting idle because the next lift isn't ready.
03:40Or it's that critical RFI stuck in someone's inbox waiting for approval while work on site just grinds to a halt.
03:46This waste, N for non-utilized talent, was actually added a bit later to the original seven, but it's arguably the most tragic.
03:55It's what happens when we create a culture where managers plan and workers just do.
03:59This ignores the simple truth that the people closest to the work are the ones who know best how to improve it.
04:05Every single time materials are moved, it adds zero value to the final product.
04:09Even worse, it actually introduces risk.
04:12The risk of damage from handling, the risk of things getting lost, and of course the risk of delays.
04:16Optimizing site logistics to minimize transportation is a huge opportunity.
04:22You know, excess inventory is so much more than just stuff taking up space.
04:26It costs money to buy.
04:27It costs money to store.
04:28It can be damaged, stolen, or it can become totally obsolete if the designs change.
04:33And critically, it hides other problems in your workflow.
04:37If you have piles of inventory, you might not realize your supply chain is unreliable until it's way too late.
04:42Now, this is different from transportation.
04:44Motion is all about the ergonomics of the work itself.
04:49There's this classic example.
04:50A foreman keeps all the drill bits locked up in a trailer 200 feet from the building.
04:55So every time a carpenter breaks a bit, they have to climb down, walk to the trailer, find the foreman, get the bit, and then walk all the way back.
05:02That's a half hour of wasted motion just for an $8 part.
05:06And finally, E is for extra processing.
05:10This is the waste of gold plating.
05:11It includes using higher precision equipment than you actually need, painting a wall that you know is going to be covered up, generating these detailed reports that no one ever reads, or requiring five signatures for a simple approval that could be handled with just one.
05:25It's all about understanding what the customer truly values and delivering exactly that.
05:30No more, no less.
05:31Okay, now what's really, really interesting is that these wastes don't exist in isolation.
05:36Oh, no.
05:36They are deeply interconnected, and they often set off a chain reaction that just ripples through the entire project.
05:41This slide just illustrates the domino effect brilliantly.
05:45It often kicks off with overproduction, which then creates excess inventory.
05:50That inventory requires transportation.
05:52All that handling increases the risk of defects.
05:56Fixing those defects is extra processing, which then makes other teams wait.
06:00You see how one bad decision can create five other types of waste?
06:03This is why attacking waste at the source is so absolutely critical.
06:07This diagram really shows that waste is truly a systemic issue.
06:12If you look over on the right, our planning systems and the constraints we face, they feed into those non-physical wastes we just talked about, our downtime.
06:19Then, as you can see in the middle, those wastes directly impact physical waste and the overall project performance on the left.
06:26You know, things like cost and schedule.
06:28It's all one big interconnected system.
06:31So, now that you can see waste, how do you get rid of it?
06:34Learning to see is the first critical step, but the real transformation happens when you actually act on what you see.
06:40So, let's look at the toolkit.
06:42Here are just a few of the powerful lean tools you can use.
06:46WasteWalks get you and your team out on site to literally hunt for downtime.
06:515S is a system for workplace organization that eliminates motion and inventory waste.
06:56The Last Planner system is a collaborative planning method that directly attacks waiting by creating reliable workflow.
07:01Just-in-time delivery minimizes inventory.
07:05And then, underlying it all is Kaizen, the philosophy that empowers everyone to make small, continuous improvements every single day.
07:12Phew! We've covered a lot of ground, from defining the enemy to building a toolkit for fighting it.
07:18Let's lock in the learning with just a few key takeaways.
07:22So, here's what we learned today.
07:24Waste, or Muda, is anything that doesn't add value.
07:27It's a huge problem, with over half of project time potentially being lost.
07:31The downtime acronym is your field guide to spotting all eight wastes.
07:35These wastes are all linked, and Lean provides a powerful toolkit to eliminate them.
07:40By doing that, you can deliver projects faster, at a lower cost, and with higher quality and safety.
07:44And that brings us to the final, crucial question for you and your team.
07:48You don't have to boil the ocean here.
07:50Just pick one.
07:51Start small.
07:52Which waste is causing you the most pain right now?
07:55Where can you get a small win just to build some momentum?
07:58That journey to amplify performance starts with that very first step.
08:02This explainer was brought to you by Unified Consulting Solutions and Dr. Mari Mutu K.
08:07If you want to continue the conversation, and maybe share which waste you're hunting,
08:11join the community using the link right in the description.
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08:20so more people can start their Lean journey, and you don't miss out on our next piece of highly productive content.
08:25For those of you who want to dig a little deeper,
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