Seven types of waste for small businesses

By: Richard Casey
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While working with Small business owners the one commonality that becomes very obvious is the lack of time that these business owners have to work on building their business. When you are the CEO, the CFO, the HR manager, the primary sales person and are in charge of budgeting, forecasting and inventory management (and many more) there is little time for anything else! Most business owners know that they should be working on building their business but just do not have the time to do so.


As there is little time to make changes, many business owners often continue to use work practices or systems that are actually stealing time from the business. These ‘time stealers’ lead to waste occurring in all aspects of the business but more importantly waste reduces profits, steals time, demoralises employees, buries people in paper work and eventually suffocates a business into submission. Waste is everywhere and can be seen in all aspects of a business.

It sometimes takes an independent set of eyes to see it but for all business owners it is necessary to be on the lookout for waste each and every day and once waste is identified, it is eliminated.

Types of waste!

So what are the seven most common types of waste and how do you see them? What follows is a short summary of the seven accepted forms of waste as defined by the Toyota Production system. They have been applied in large scale manufacturing for years but are just as applicable to business of any size and type.

1. Transportation: The transport of goods from one place to another.
Where in your business do you spend time transporting items of goods from one position to another?

2. Inventory: Having more inventory than is needed.
Are you ever left with inventory that cannot be used or sold? How did it get there? What can you do to prevent this from happening?

3. Motion: Excess motion required when completing a task.
What activities in your business require your staff to walk or move from their primary place of work to another place to complete their work? Can you reduce this?

4. Waiting: Waiting for something to complete before you can continue.
Where do you find yourself standing around waiting for things to happen? What can you do to eliminate this waiting?

5. Overproduction: Making more than you need.
Have you ever made more than you needed? What is leading to this and what can you do to eliminate this waste?

6. Over processing: Completing too many steps to achieve a Goal
How many occurrences of duplication are there in your business? Why are they there? Where did they come from? Why do you need them? What can you do to eliminate them?

7. Defects: Making mistakes and having to do things again.
Are there any processes that you use that are prone to mistakes? A form that is confusing for your customers or an ordering process that leads to wrong orders being taken? Is there any part of your business that you find you are doing the work twice?

Challenge 
I am confident that by reading they above descriptions that you as a business owner will have identified some form of waste in your company. My Challenge to you is to now fix that one issue. You will find that by fixing this issue you will eliminate the waste associated with the activity, removed an issue and freed up some time to work on the more important needs of your business.