To eliminate waste, you first have to see it
To eliminate waste, you first have to see it (Photo: Pexels)
Just look around: we live in a world surrounded by waste of all kinds, both in our everyday lives, in our homes, and in organizations.
In principle, everyone agrees that it is important to eliminate it, since it generates additional costs, consumes resources and adds no value whatsoever for people or for society.
The problem is that we gradually get used to waste and slowly lose the sensitivity to see it. We come to find it natural that it exists. In a way, we become “anesthetized”, no longer bothered by it, which means that, in general, we take no concrete action to eliminate it.
Take water waste, for example. A few years ago, it was very common to see people using a hose and wasting an enormous amount of water to “sweep” dirt or leaves off the sidewalk. And, generally, few people were bothered by it.
After the water crisis of a few years ago, society — or at least part of it — learned to see this waste. If someone did that today, they would risk getting into a fight with their neighbors or even being reported. There was a change in attitude, in posture…
It is no accident that John Shook titled his celebrated book on one of the pillars of lean thinking, Value Stream Mapping, “Learning to See”.
Seeing waste goes beyond the physical act of merely “looking”; it implies “understanding” and, consequently, doing something about it.
The wasteful water spray of the past was looked at by many, but most did not see it as waste; today, most people do, and many try to do something to prevent it from happening.
In companies, we have many similar cases of processes that are actually waste but remain “hidden”. For example, waiting, rework, unnecessary movement, etc., which are often regarded as normal, but are not.
Taiich Onho, considered the father of the Toyota system, which gave rise to lean, was obsessed with making people see waste, which he classified into seven types: overproduction, waiting, unnecessary processing, inventory, transportation, motion and correction of defects.
Legend has it that he would draw a chalk circle on the floor, place the plant manager inside it and ask him to say what he saw. Until the manager saw all the waste that Ohno saw, the manager stayed in the circle.
Today, this would be considered workplace harassment. And we certainly do not need to use coercion to train people, but using more persuasive ways to get them to try to see waste is essential.
One situation is when we look at waste (idle people, for example) but do not “see” it, that is, we are not bothered by it. In these cases, a great deal of education, training and methods are needed to change attitudes.
An even worse situation is when waste is not so evident. In the case of water, imagine an internal, hidden pipe leaking slowly, with the flow going into a drain or into the ground, but no one easily sees it. It will only be noticed by other means, with measurements, comparison with expected consumption, etc.
In companies it is the same. In administrative processes, for example, when important information sits idle in some computer memory, and someone will possibly only process it who knows when… In this case, the waste of waiting, or inventory, is not as evident as in manufacturing, where everyone sees a pile of raw material sitting idle, waiting to be processed…
In these cases, it is necessary, first and foremost, to make waste visible. This is possible, for example, with visual controls, boards that show what is happening day by day (or even hour by hour), how much information to be processed came in and went out, what the objectives are, how we are doing, etc.
Be relentless with waste in your company and in your daily life. Try to make it visible and develop your own and your colleagues' ability to see it as anomalies in poorly designed processes. And adopt the attitude of not settling, but of fighting any expenditure of human energy or resources that is not absolutely necessary to add value for your customers.
