E06: The Two Evil Wastes

For episode 6 of Continuous Improvement Journey’s podcast, we will discuss the law of operational and process wastes, which is a continuation of exploring each of the 13 Laws of System Optimization we have discussed so far in the previous 3 episodes.

In the lean community, you hear all kinds of talk about removing waste, eliminating waste, lowering inventory levels, and extravagant programs and posters about the 8 wastes. However, the generalized lean definitions of waste and the hunt to eliminate the 8 wastes in our organizations are missing the point and are typical of “kid-lean.”

But what about operational waste? Or in other words, what do we do about reducing the second category of waste, which contains about 75% of all our system waste, when process waste only contributes about 25% of waste?

I hope that these 13 laws of System Optimization will help give us a larger and all-encompassing perspective to help take us to the next level from our traditional lean manufacturing training.