Waste Walk: How to Implement Quality Productively

Are you familiar with the "Waste Walk," which could be described as a "Walk to Identify Waste"? It's a cornerstone tool of Lean Manufacturing, but it can be readily applied in any organization seeking to implement Quality in a smart and productive way.

This walk, aimed at highlighting potential waste (of time, resources, materials, etc.), should take no more than half an hour. It should be done alone or in a small group, and the tools needed are simply a notebook and a camera (your phone's will work perfectly!).

In many ways, this walk through the company will seem no different from a routine inspection that every quality professional has carried out many times throughout their career. However, this time, departments and offices should be carefully observed in search of inefficiencies and waste of all kinds.

But what is "waste" or "Muda," as the Japanese call it?

According to Toyota, one of the companies in the world that has most distinguished itself for its willingness to continuously improve, including by combating inefficiencies, anything that doesn't correspond to the minimum of materials, equipment, space, time, resources, parts, machinery necessary to add value to a product should be considered waste.

Although the sources of waste vary greatly from one organization to another, there are significant similarities. Let's review the seven main wastes (plus 1!) identified by Toyota that can be easily found in any working environment:

• Waste related to transportation (e.g., all inefficient movements of things within the organization or a company layout that leads to much longer movements than necessary. For example, if packaging is placed far from a packaging line or raw materials are stored far from the production line, there is waste);
• Waste related to inventory (any type of stock is waste, and the cause can be poor planning, incorrect forecasting, or poorly calibrated purchases. Note that even temporary stocks are considered waste because these are materials that will need to be moved and stored, even if only for a short time. So, if, for example, we have a packaging line that can't keep up with the production line, it's obvious that products to be packaged will accumulate, and this is waste. Even inefficient quality control procedures can result in a build-up of intermediate product awaiting inspection and analysis);
• Waste in movements made by people (production sites with a poorly designed layout can force people to move much more than necessary or to perform poorly ergonomic movements, resulting in a net loss of efficiency. More simply, even switches or control panels that are difficult to reach waste time. A poorly designed workstation will cause unnecessary movements for those who work there, while people should be at the center of the processes);
• Waste classified as waiting times (e.g., for equipment that is not in place and things that are not easy to see and find, but also for delays, people waiting to be able to work, vehicles waiting to be unloaded, etc.);
• Waste due to overproduction (producing more than necessary is waste and also creates waste related to inventory!); waste related to processes that lead to over-processing (producing something excessively high compared to customer specifications and requirements is clearly waste);
• Waste of defects (this is perhaps the easiest waste to identify because it can be wrong, discarded, or reworked products);
• There is then a further waste that has been added to the original seven, which is the talent of people not correctly utilized (this waste was not included by Toyota in the list of wastes perhaps because the company already had a very modern vision and considered people as a fundamental resource for work efficiency and, for this reason, trained them properly, helped them grow professionally, and ensured that they always found the right motivation to commit to their work.

Many organizations, however, are not so astute and have their people perform tasks for which they are overqualified, offering them few opportunities to grow and improve. If you really want to solve problems, however, you need to involve people, ask the operators, and that is why people should always be at the center of our work).

Canon went beyond the list developed by Toyota and identified nine wastes that can also be found in organizations that dedicate themselves to services and not just the production of actual products. Let's see them together:

• Waste caused by processes;
• Defects;
• Waste related to equipment;
• Waste in expenses;
• Waste related to indirect labor;
• Inefficiencies in planning;
• Waste in human resources;
• Waste in operations;
• Waste related to the start-up of activities

A person trained to recognize each of these wastes during a "Waste Walk" will easily be able to identify which work habits, often ingrained, represent classic examples of work that produces waste and that could be easily improved. Record all examples of waste in the notebook and/or with the camera (a before-and-after photo will help people better understand the concept of "Waste Walk"). Remember that even a normal or essential process step may contain wasteful elements and can therefore be improved.