What about the 9th Waste?
Do you know the 8 Wastes of lean? What about the 9th? If you are familiar with lean you certainly do know the 8 Wastes and even if you’re not well versed in lean you probably know of them but haven’t formally labeled them as such. One very important aspect of lean, and I might add, the one that most companies who “do” lean tend to focus the most on, is to eliminate waste. I totally agree—waste is wasteful and it is a very worthwhile goal to eliminate waste—it’s just that I believe lean has overlooked one waste that besets nearly every company which I’m going to call the “9th Waste”. Before I reveal the 9th Waste let me back up just a bit to explain what lean is and what the 8 Wastes have to do with it so we’re all on the same page.
What is Lean?
Here’s a brief overview of Lean. (If you want to learn more about lean I encourage to enter lean in a search engine and start reading. The information on the web about lean is enormous.) Lean is based on Toyota’s Production System. The analogy of lean is a house, i.e. “house of lean”. Lean is built on the foundation of stability and sustainability. The house has two pillars (supports) comprised of respect for people and continuous improvement. The roof is made up of “operational excellence” whose goals are to achieve the highest quality, lowest cost and shortest amount of time every time. Within the house are many tools and principles. One of the principles is to eliminate waste.
Waste and 8 Wastes
Lean strives to reduce waste. In order to know what waste is you have to understand the difference between Value-add activities and non-Value-add activities.
· Value Add (VA) Activities=those that help satisfy a customers’ need by transforming inputs to outputs the FIRST time. Essentially, the customer will pay for these activities to occur.
o Examples: designing, building, delivering, installing, etc.
· Non-Value Add (NVA)=consumes time and money and doesn’t help satisfy customers’ need, i.e. the customer does not want to pay for these activities.
o Examples: rework, hand-offs, waiting, filing, approval, entering information, inspecting, etc.
To help people identify waste lean created a list of 8 Wastes. They are:
1. Defects
2. Overproduction
3. Waiting
4. Not engaging all (waste of people talent)
5. Transportation
6. Inventory
7. Motion
8. Extra processing
What about the 9th Waste?
If you thought that Lean doesn’t have 9th Waste—you are right. But it should. The 9th Waste is Risk! Ok, now I know you’re wondering how does Risk equate with Waste? Good question. What happens when there is Risk in the process, i.e. risk for illness, injury or error? Does Risk lead to employees making the “wrong” choice? Does Risk lead to employees getting hurt or hurting someone else? Isn’t the resultant error, injury or illness a Waste? In my mind it is—a huge potential waste just waiting to happen if it’s not identified. Safety professionals along with frontline supervisors know the hassle, frustration, waiting, staffing issues, production issues and quality issues that occur from RISK, i.e. (human) errors, injuries and illnesses. Identifying Risk as a Waste is equally as important as identifying the other 8 wastes. How effective, stable and sustainable is a “mapped and improved” process it the risks within them remain? Cracks will appear in the foundation, the roof “excellence” will be damaged and over the time the “house” will start to crumble.
If I’m building a house or if I’m repairing a house I want to identify all of the risks ahead of time so I avoid needless delays, cost over-runs and hours of frustration and extra processing. If I’m doing lean; taking the time to look at value streams and map them to identify and eliminate waste, wouldn’t I be adding waste and hurting my efforts by not focusing in on Risk along with the other 8?
Risk is the 9th Waste. Identify it, find solutions and eliminate it. You’ll build a better house (of lean)!
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