Eliminate Waste

Eliminating every kind of non value-added activity from the system.

There are seven "deadly wastes":

  1. Overproduction: Making something before it is truly needed. This is a particularly serious form of waste because it leads to excess inventory (or code) that is often used to mask other underlying problems and inefficiencies.
  2. Waiting: Time when work-in-process is waiting for the next step in production (no value is being added). It can be truly illuminating to look at the time from order to delivery and ask – how much of that time is actually spent on true value-added activities.
  3. Transport: Unnecessary movement of raw materials, work-in-process, finished goods, or deployed software.
  4. Motion (or lack of direct access to information): Unnecessary movement of people (movement that does not add value), such as in no direct contact with the customer, lack of a shared workspace or a single backlog, or bureaucracy.
  5. Over-processing: More processing than is needed to produce what the customer requires. This is often one of the more difficult wastes to detect and eliminate.
  6. Inventory: Product (raw materials, work-in-process, or finished goods) quantities that go beyond supporting the immediate need. This often takes the form of deliverables that are "done" but not being used by customers due to a dependency that is not complete.
  7. Defects: Production that is scrap or requires rework. Often a by-product of not designing quality in.

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