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Process waste level

How can process waste level improve people, teams, or organisational effectiveness?

AccessibleStrategicOrganisation3 min read

Contents

Helps managers answer: To what extent are our processes lean and effective?

Process waste level examines resources consumed without creating the customer, safety, regulatory or operational value the process is intended to deliver. Lean practice uses the measure to expose causes and redesign work—not simply to make people move faster or remove every activity that a customer cannot see.

When to use it

Answer the performance question: “Where does this process consume effort without advancing a required outcome?”
Assess the KPI within operational processes and the supply chain.
Diagnose delay, movement, inventory, overproduction, over-processing and defects.
Design measures for a defined process and validate improvements with workers and customers.
Pair efficiency with safety, quality, resilience and workload.

Origins

Waste elimination is central to the Toyota Production System and later Lean practice. Toyota describes the system as developing across generations through jidoka, just-in-time and continuous improvement, with Taiichi Ohno playing a major role in its operating framework. Ohno’s seven categories of muda became a widely used way to observe non-value-adding work.

What it is

Perspective: Operational processes and supply chain perspective.

Key performance question: Where does this process consume effort without advancing a required outcome?

Lean often distinguishes necessary non-value-adding work—such as a proportionate safety or regulatory control—from unnecessary waste. The latter is the immediate redesign target. The distinction is contextual: an inspection may be necessary while a process is unstable but removable after the cause of defects is controlled.

The seven traditional categories are:

Transportation: unnecessary movement of materials, parts or information.

Motion: unnecessary movement by people or equipment.

Inventory: material, work in progress or finished goods beyond the amount required for reliable flow.

Waiting: idle people, customers, systems, materials or facilities.

Overproduction: producing earlier, faster or in greater quantity than demand requires.

Over-processing: effort, precision, approvals or features beyond the required outcome.

Defects: output requiring correction, replacement, rework or rejection.

Many practitioners add unused human capability as another category. Do not label protective capacity, breaks or consultation as waste without understanding the system and the people affected.

How to use it

Measurement

Map one end-to-end process with the people who perform and receive the work. Define value, demand, required controls and process boundaries. Observe actual flow rather than relying only on procedure documents.

Data collection method

Use direct observation, timestamps, system events, movement diagrams, work sampling and defect records. Manual observation can change behaviour, so repeat it across representative periods and explain the purpose to participants.

Formula

Waste needs a measure matched to its mechanism. Examples include:

Transportation

process steps shown on a travel diagram;
courier time and distance;
distance that staff carry supplies, reagents or specimens.

Motion

travel distance required to complete the process;
spaghetti diagrams during peak operation;
walking distance to obtain materials, supplies or specimens.

Inventory

staff time spent ordering and rotating stock;
quantity stored locally compared with the store room;
age, expiry and work-in-progress dwell time.

Waiting

time waiting to relay critical results;
patient waiting time for outpatient phlebotomy;
technologist time waiting for specimens.

Overproduction

specimens delivered per hour;
batches per shift;
batch size passed between process steps.

Over-processing

repeated sorting in specimen processing;
repeated sorting before analysis;
repeated sorting before storage.

Defects

defects passed from one process step to the next;
corrected reports;
specimens requiring clean-up, re-spinning, re-drawing or re-labelling.

Adapted from the historical laboratory example at www.sprickstegall.com/blog-the-laboratory-strategy-space/bid/29843/8-Lean-Wastes-3-Optimal-Metrics-for-Each.

Frequency

Measure intensively during discovery and improvement, then retain a small set of leading and outcome indicators at a cadence that can detect regression. Continuous improvement does not require continuous surveillance of workers.

Source of the data

Combine direct observation with workflow systems, inventory records, quality data and employee or customer evidence. No single source captures all waste.

Cost/effort in collecting the data

Observation and process mapping can require substantial effort. Prioritise high-volume, high-risk or high-delay processes and collect only data that can change a decision. Involve workers so measurement captures hidden work and does not become an external inspection exercise.

Target setting/benchmarks

Cross-process benchmarks are rarely meaningful because definitions and demand differ. Establish a verified baseline and target the cause of a specific loss. A lower count is not improvement if workload, risk or delay merely moves elsewhere.

Example

Portakabin, a producer of portable modular buildings, is presented as a Lean case. Process observation reportedly led to module redesign, material reuse, alternative materials, pre-cut steel beams and pre-sized boards and floors, reducing trimming and waste.

Treat the case as an illustration rather than proof. Verify current practices and measure total material, labour, quality and environmental effects. Pre-sizing can reduce offcuts while creating upstream waste if demand or specifications vary.

Top practical tip

Go to the work with the people who perform it. Trace demand, value, delay, hand-offs and rework, then remove a root cause and verify the end-to-end result.

Top pitfall

Do not equate people, protective capacity or every non-customer-facing activity with waste. Local cost cutting can transfer work, weaken safety and make the whole system less reliable.