00:00Welcome to Unified Consulting Solutions, where we simplify complexity and amplify performance.
00:06Ever feel like there's some invisible force just sucking the life out of your projects?
00:11Draining your time, your budget, your energy?
00:13Well, there is. It's called waste.
00:16And today, we're going to make that waste visible and show you exactly how to eliminate it.
00:2190%? I know, that sounds insane, right?
00:24But just think about it for a second.
00:26For anyone starting on a new project, how much of the day is actually spent doing valuable work versus, you know, just searching for information, waiting for someone to get back to you, or fixing a mistake that shouldn't have happened in the first place?
00:39All those activities add zero value.
00:41Our goal today is to give you the framework to finally see that waste, and then to crush it.
00:47So, here's our game plan.
00:48First, we'll meet the three big enemies of efficiency to really understand what waste means.
00:53Then, we'll dive deep into spotting the eight specific wastes that pop up everywhere.
00:59After that, we'll talk about how to train your eyes to see this stuff in the wild.
01:02And finally, we'll open up the Lean Toolkit and give you practical ways to start fighting back.
01:07All right, let's kick things off by expanding our minds a bit.
01:10When we say waste, we're not just talking about scraps of material in a bin.
01:14In the Lean world, waste is way, way bigger than that.
01:18It's literally any part of a process that doesn't add value for your customer.
01:21And this definition from 1992 by Koskela just hits the nail on the head.
01:27It reframes waste as using more of anything than is absolutely necessary.
01:32More time, more materials, more mouse clicks, more steps.
01:36You get the idea.
01:38This simple but really powerful concept is the engine behind the entire Lean philosophy.
01:43Now, the Toyota production system identified three of these enemies, and they're all connected.
01:48We're going to focus today on Mura, which is the obvious wasteful stuff.
01:52But it's super important to know that it's often caused by the other two.
01:55You've got Mura, which is unevenness or inconsistency in your process.
01:59And then you have Muri, which is overburdening your people or your machines.
02:03See how that works?
02:04A bumpy, unpredictable process, that's Mura, leads to overworked, stressed-out teams, that's Muri, which in turn leads to mistakes and shortcuts.
02:12In other words, Mura.
02:14Okay, so let's zoom right in on Muda.
02:16We're going to break it down into eight distinct categories.
02:19And you should think of these as a checklist.
02:21I promise you, once you learn to spot them, you are going to start seeing them everywhere.
02:25And lucky for us, there's a really simple way to remember them all.
02:29The acronym, downtime.
02:31Each letter stands for a specific kind of waste.
02:34Let's walk through them one by one.
02:36First up, D is for defects.
02:38This is any work that wasn't done right the first time and has to be fixed or completely redone.
02:43Rework doesn't just waste materials.
02:45It absolutely destroys schedules and team morale.
02:48Next is O, for overproduction.
02:51This is a big one.
02:51They call it the mother of all wastes because it causes so many other problems.
02:56It's making something before it's truly needed, like a contractor who orders all the ductwork for a floor at once.
03:01Now it just clutters the site, gets damaged, and creates a whole chain reaction of other issues.
03:07W is for waiting.
03:08Gosh, how much of our day is spent just waiting?
03:11Waiting for a decision, for a delivery, for a response to an email.
03:15Every single minute spent waiting is a minute of productivity just gone forever.
03:19And then we have N, for non-utilized talent.
03:22Honestly, this one's just tragic.
03:24It's the waste of not listening to the people actually doing the work.
03:28They are the true experts.
03:30And ignoring their ideas for improvement is a massive, massive lost opportunity.
03:34Next up, T for transportation.
03:37Moving materials or information around more than absolutely necessary.
03:40Every time you move something, you risk delaying it or damaging it.
03:44This often leads straight to I for inventory.
03:47Excess inventory is basically dead money.
03:48It's cash tied up in stuff that's just sitting there, taking up space, and risking damage.
03:53When that capital could be used to create real value somewhere else.
03:57M is for motion.
03:58That's the unnecessary movement of people.
04:00There's a famous story of a carpenter having to walk 200 feet to a site trailer just to get a single $8 drill bit.
04:06The cost of that drill bit was nothing compared to the cost of that half hour of wasted time.
04:10And finally, E is for extra processing.
04:12This is doing more work than the customer actually values.
04:15Polishing something that doesn't need to be polished, adding signatures that aren't required, or creating reports that absolutely no one reads.
04:22So, you've now got the vocabulary.
04:25You can name the eight wastes.
04:26But knowing the names isn't enough.
04:29The next step, and it's the harder one, is making a mental shift.
04:33Learning to see these wastes in your own daily work.
04:35The most powerful way to do this is with a waste walk.
04:40You go to the gemba.
04:40That's a Japanese term for the real place, where the work actually happens.
04:44So, you don't sit in an office.
04:45You get up and go to the factory floor, the construction site, the service desk, and you just watch.
04:51You observe the whole process with that downtime acronym fresh in your mind.
04:55For a more structured approach, teams will use a technique called value stream mapping.
05:00Take a look at this example.
05:01It visualizes every single step of a process, from the first request all the way to the final delivery.
05:07The team then goes through each box and asks a really simple question.
05:11Does this step add value for the customer, or is it waste?
05:14When you lay it all out like this, the non-value-added steps, the waiting, the rework, the unnecessary approvals, they become glaringly obvious.
05:22And of course, you can't improve what you don't measure.
05:25This diagram shows how a team can create a waste register.
05:28They track not just the physical waste, like leftover concrete, but also all that downtime waste we talked about.
05:35And as you can see from the arrows, this data then feeds directly into their project's performance metrics.
05:40It connects the abstract idea of waiting to the concrete reality of schedule delays and increased cost, making the business case for getting rid of it.
05:48Okay, you've learned what waste is and how to see it.
05:52Now for the most important part.
05:54What are you going to do about it?
05:55Let's equip you with two foundational tools to take action.
05:59The first tool is 5S.
06:02It's a simple, five-step method for creating a hyper-organized workspace.
06:06First, you sort.
06:08Get rid of everything you don't need.
06:10Second, set an order.
06:11Organize everything that's left so it's efficient.
06:13A place for everything and everything in its place.
06:15Third, shine.
06:17You clean the workplace because that makes it easy to spot problems like leaks or missing tools.
06:22Fourth, standardize.
06:23Create rules so everyone follows the same process.
06:26And finally, sustain.
06:28You make 5S a regular habit so it sticks.
06:30But lean is more than just a tidy workspace.
06:33At its heart, it's a philosophy.
06:35It's a mindset of continuous improvement.
06:38And in Japanese, this philosophy is called kaizen.
06:40Now, kaizen isn't about some massive, top-down reorganization.
06:45Not at all.
06:46It's about empowering every single person on the team to make small, incremental improvements every single day.
06:52The cycle is beautifully simple.
06:54You find a problem.
06:55You brainstorm a small, targeted change to address it.
06:57You implement that change.
06:59You check the results to see if it actually worked.
07:01And then you repeat.
07:03It's this relentless, collaborative pursuit of a better way.
07:06And that right there is the ultimate goal.
07:09Eliminating waste isn't a one-time project.
07:12It's a fundamental shift in your culture.
07:14It's about moving from a mindset of just doing the work to one where you're constantly improving the work.
07:20It's about making every single person a problem solver.
07:23So, we'll leave you with this.
07:25Now that you can see the invisible waste that's all around you,
07:29what's one small point of friction in your workday?
07:31And what's the first small Kaizen-style step you can take tomorrow to eliminate it?
07:36We've covered a lot today, from the three enemies of efficiency,
07:39to the eight wastes of downtime, and the tools like 5S and Kaizen to fight back.
07:44I hope this has been valuable for you.
07:46This is Dr. Mari Muthu-K for Unified Consulting Solutions.
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