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April 11, 2006
7+ Sins of Muda
When you prevent unnecessary waste in manufacturing, you tackle inefficiency, and therefore, costs. Here we look at resources that organizations' everyday work activities often spend fruitlessly — collectively called “the Seven Wastes” — plus an eighth additional value killer.
In addition to being a key component of the Toyota Production System, muda is a Japanese term for anything that is wasteful and adds no value. By definition, something that is wasted is a loss to you. Some waste may be unavoidable, a necessary byproduct of operating your business. But when you prevent unnecessary waste, you tackle inefficiency, and therefore, cost.
Taiichi Ohno, who introduced the just-in-time (JIT) production system at Toyota Motor Company, was the first person to recognize the enormous amount of muda in the everyday work activities of an organization. Ohno identified and classified the following resources as commonly wasted, collectively called “the Seven Wastes.”
Overproduction
This creates more products than needed at a point in time. Often it is caused by fear of running out. However, producing more than "just enough" or "just-in-time" inventory drives up the costs of inventory and results in scrap if demand does not equal supply — wasting all the value if the excess products must be scrapped or sold at a loss.
Often considered the worst of the seven wastes because it encompasses the rest of the wastes, often this is caused by quality problems. These kind of issues can be tackled using mistake-proofing methods (Pokayoke) and by understanding the machine process capabilities of the production equipment. Statistical process control (SPC) will also help monitor production outputs and give warning of problems before they occur.
Delay/Waiting
Waiting is the waste of people's time when they have to wait for a part, materials or information they require to perform their work or make decisions. You can usually spot this quickly, as it means people are standing around and waiting for something else to happen so they can do their part of the process.
(Also, products waiting around in factories either as finished goods or work in progress (WIP) is a major cause of waste. Concentrating on keeping bottleneck processes going is a good way of reducing WIP. See the Transportation/Conveyance waste, below.)
While small delays may seem insignificant, they all add up.
Transportation/Conveyance
This is the unnecessary movement of products, materials or information. The things necessary to do the job should be at hand so you don’t have to go get them or take them to where they are needed. Factory layouts often can be the fundamental cause of excess transportation. When appropriate, re-laying out the machines within a factory from a functional to a cellular layout has been found by many companies to help not only reduce transportation waste — but also reduce WIP and waiting.
Excess inventory levels can also lead to wasted handling.
Motion
The unnecessary movement of people — such as walking, lifting, reaching and stretching — can be cut down via simple “good housekeeping,” effectively reducing wasted movement. 5S is a technique used by many companies to focus effort on keeping the workplace tidy, with unused materials and machines disposed of so as not to create unnecessary clutter and therefore searching.
Again, re-laying out the factory can also help reduce “motion” waste.
Inventory
Always a tough one for accountants, inventory is well known as a cost item. Finished products, parts and supplies kept in inventory are pure cost, not value; they add additional cost by requiring space, additional facilities and equipment to handle and move them, and they can become scrap if they exceed shelf life or are of no demand. The true cost of excess inventory levels should be analyzed carefully before you order excess raw materials simply because the purchase price is less. Many companies order over and above what is required to fulfill the order, perhaps partly due to quality problems along the production process or the often-mistaken belief that it saves money by ordering larger quantities.
Just-in-time inventory and lean manufacturing can eliminate such unnecessary costs by matching production to demand in real time to eliminate the need for excessive inventory, warehouse and equipment space, etc.
Over Processing
Muda occurs when a step in the process does not add value as perceived by the customer and thus causes you to examine which of your processes — or even products — are necessary. Do the customers really care about a particular product feature and your company simply hasn’t figured that out yet?
Do not use more energy or activity than is necessary to produce a product. Likewise, do not add more value than customers are willing to pay for.
Defects/Correction
Again caused by quality-related issues, manufacturing has costs of scrap and rework when processes produce defects.
It takes less time to make something right than it does to make it poorly only to have to correct it later.
Since Ohno identified and classified the resources into the original list (those stated above), others have included additional categories, including the following:
• Inappropriate systems;
• Energy and water; and
• Pollution.
In particular, Underutilization of Employees, or untapped human potential/skill, is widely added to Ohno’s original as an eighth waste. While organizations employ each in their staff for a specific skill, they neglect capitalizing on employees' other skills. It is a waste not to take advantage of these skills as well. Administrative connection within a company can break barriers to knowledge, creativity and innovation. As such, organizations can eliminate the other seven wastes and continuously improve their performance.
While “The Seven Wastes” list is not a tool in itself to tackle the waste-causing problems within a company, it does play a valuable role in tackling inefficiency and therefore cost.
Resources
The 7 Manufacturing Wastes
EMS Consulting Group, Lean Manufacturing Consulting and Training
August 29, 2003
Seven Wastes of the Extended Value Stream
EMS Consulting Group, Lean Manufacturing Consulting and Training
December 1, 2004
The eight deadly sins of waste
The Fashion-Incubator blog
December 16, 2005
Waste Elimination: “The Seven Deadly Wastes”TBM Consulting Group
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30 CommentsI would like to add more on the "MUDA" list:
8. Uncontrolled layers of managment. Like when you have a manager for every 5 to 10 people.
9. All the buzzword administrators like any color of the 6 Sigma belts, full-time burocrats.
10. All the burocrats that try to create a form or a rule for any basic human operation in the industry, so that we don't need to use our head, experience, training or basic common sense just follow the "PROCEDURE"
11. All the paper pushers that basic function is to collect measurables that indicate what a waste they are.
If you can add on my list (I know you can) please bring it up so that we all dig them out from the holes where they're hiding.
April 11, 2006 4:42 PMThanks for the mention (I feel most of my lean efforts are missed or ignored). I wrote a post similar to this one, describing the meaning and necessity of standard work. I mention it as the development of standard work is the basis of kaizen and reducing waste.
http://www.fashion-incubator.com/mt/archives/standard_work.html
Again thanks.
April 11, 2006 5:54 PMI would like to add some more :
Apart from "muda," there are two mores 'M's ... one is Mura and the other, Muri.
Mura talks about Irregularity.
Muri talks about Difficulty.
These two factors will also plays a major role in the elimination of hidden waste.
April 11, 2006 11:10 PMI have a solution to minimize waste accumulation significantly and revolutionarily.
April 12, 2006 9:03 AMP.S. By the way, I remembered numerous times when meetings of hours were held and lean tasks were given to eliminate singular occurences of $10.00 worth of waste.
And we wonder why our jobs are moving overseas.
We forget one thing: that the Japanese also use the basic rule in management, "Solve all problems at the lowest possible level," and that means that they perform Lean and Kaizan etc. at the root of the problem; they are not adding like we do in North America layers and layers of paper pushers.
Does anybody know what happens with boats that are TOP HEAVY like ours is? They sink.
April 12, 2006 9:50 AMSorry, but I can't resist this one. Is for B. Shyam Sundar [above commentor]:
B. Shyam, it seems like you need to add some fiber to the diet to get rid of your Mura and Muri.
I hope you can see the humor.
April 12, 2006 10:41 AMAs a production engineer, I've heard many complaints about U. S. industries going to standardized work and not letting the people use their experience or common sense to do the job. They complain that it is like the management wants to turn them into robots so the skilled labor jobs can be given to a bunch of uneducated, inexperienced people at much lower wages.
What both the management and the laborers must learn is that standardized work is an agreement of the best way to perform a job. It is a group decision based on trial and experimentation at all levels, but particularly at the laborer's level. This is because the person doing the job has the best knowledge of the difficulties of doing the job.
At least 5 of your mudas are reduced or eliminated by properly deciding on and using standardized work. Uneducated, inexperienced people, no matter how cheap they work, cannot make up for the knowlege of skilled, experienced workers.
April 12, 2006 10:45 AMIt is very true, Craig.
My experience is that Best Practices, or Standards for that matter, are opposed to Creativity and Innovation. The mistake is when we try to implement either one or the other. The whole art of management is to combine them in a harmonious way. What some people forget sometimes is that, regardless of the best practices or standards, people in any positions want to use their heads, and sometimes come up with BETTER best practices. This is why we should encourage creativity without chaos and at the same time embrace best practices without handcuffing everything with them.
April 12, 2006 11:28 AMIn the early '90s, a book called "Quality is Free" was published. The title basically states it very simply. The poses a dilemma for most production managers. The concept goes contrary to their basic driver, BONUS, based on units-out-the-door mentality. Anything that causes a drop in units can't be trusted. We've all heard it: "A loss per unit can be overcome by making it up in volume." Unless it can be shown that savings will create double the dollar figure of their expected bonus, nothing will happen. (tip from a sales agent) This book shows how less is more.
April 13, 2006 8:53 AMAre we all so cought up in our own thoughts that we dont see the CYA effect? How many times has a process engineer added inspection operations to be sure his process is efficent, or how many times do we add a layer of paper that documents what ar considered critical features of a unit just so you can cover your butt in case of a failure that has not happened and probably wont.
April 19, 2006 2:52 PMI do procedure analysis & documentation because I want jobs to stay here and American companies to thrive. A lack of formal procedures can kill a company. Formal procedures keep it healthy. Continuous improvement is easy when you can read something and apply your experience and skills to make it better, faster, cheaper. One quality manager almost fainted when she read what her workers were actually doing. She fixed it fast.
April 19, 2006 2:56 PMI agree with Joy Montgomery.
Using a quality managment approach does add value to a company's bottom line. In spite of all the resistance I've seen by managers and supervisors to applying QM, creating and maintaining "living" procedures flexible enough to change with time and necessity does pay off. Using time and resources to collect process data is also not a waste. You cannot know how well you are doing if you don't apply effective measures to your procedures. I could go on.
April 20, 2006 9:17 AMI agree that there is a lot of waste, and it's good to see it so clearly explained. But "muda" is only one part of the complete TPS, which most American companies and consultants haven't figured out yet. Like business process reengineering (BPR) projects of the '90s, most Lean initiatives seem to be focused on cost-cutting and waste elimination rather than on holistic process improvement across the entire company.
I recently published a White Paper that points out that Toyota does much more with TPS than focus on muda. They leverage the streamlined process, motivate their people appropriately through personal scorecards, and dominate their markets. The TPS acronym should perhaps be renamed as TOTAL Production System.
Toyota and other companies that are dominating their markets are NOT focused on implementing Lean or any other fad-of-the-times -- they're focused on continuous product innovation, customer-centric service and the best quality products in their respective markets.
We need to remember that methodologies and buzzwords are only a means to an end -- higher profitability -- and that implementing a methodology might win an award, but the methodology alone won't win customers.
April 20, 2006 12:44 PMThank you for the good article.
I was born and raised in Japan, but I have lived in the USA for more than 34 years. I manage a Japanese auto parts company in Indianapolis using TPS. I was trained in Japan by TMC (Toyota Motor Corp.) -- No. 1 PE (Production Engineering Dept.) -- for many years.
I have set up TMMK, TMMC, TMMI, etc. There are three key words: Muri, Muda and Mura. Straining (forcing), waste, irregularity (nonconcistency). These are the basic key concepts along with 5 S'S. But now called 7 S's. Seikaku and Shitsukoku are the additions. Just for your info.
If you want to know more about the in-depth Japanese system, contact me aytime. I will be glad to share.
Ken Sese
One thing to remember while we are busy importing Japanese quality methods, is the difference in our cultures.
As I understand it, in Japan there is little expectation that a worker can advance to management or ownership. Perhaps this is changning in recent years, but the workers are expected to pull together for the company's benefit. Introducing a quality method or procedure to the worker is perhaps easier. To benefit the company is almost a matter of patriotic duty.
In the U.S., on the other hand, workers see themselves in a more independent light. They can move into management or go off to form their own company. They can fluidly move from job to job if they don't like conditions where they are. Adding more quality procedures can be seen as a nuisance, unless the worker has a personal stake in the outcome. This can be done by giving the worker "ownership" of the process, whether literally or figuratively, and designing things so the worker has a stake in the outcome. Not every worker should be, or wants to be, treated as an owner, of course, but for those who can and do, the rewards will benefit the entire company. Following Muda, Kaizan, Six-Sigma, TQM, etc. can all help, but changing the attitude of the workforce must come first, or no amount of alphabet acronyms will have any effect at all.
