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OK, so there’s a recession on and we’re all trying to find ways to increase our revenues and profit. One way we can do that is make more sales, or find other ways to increase the money coming in.

However – another equally effective way to increase profit is to reduce outgoings, and a great place to start is to look at reducing waste in business processes.

This is where Lean Training can really help your business. Lean Principles will help you to identify where your processes are inefficient and where this is having the biggest impact on your customers.

Below we’ve provided a list of the 7 deadly wastes - if you recognise any of these in any of your business processes they’re most likely not as lean as they could be, and one of our practical Lean Training Courses could help you.

Before we start – its worth noting that a business process can be absolutely anything your orgasniation does on a routine basis. This could be the way invoices are processed, how incoming calls are handled, right up to complex  processes like manufacturing a car or putting up a building. No process is too small or large to be improved by Lean.

1.  Over Production
This is making too much of whatever you’re producing – not stopping when you should have done, making or processing things too early. How often do you make extra “just-in-case”?

2. Waiting
This is when something gets stuck at a certain point in a process. For example people waiting in a queue, or parts piling up in a factory. In most cases its very hard for waiting time to be reduced to zero – but Lean Principles suggest that zero should always be the goal. This also refers to when the people in your process are waiting for something to do – this is wasted time, and it’s the processes’ fault for not being lean, not theirs!

3. Transporting
Transporting something from one place to another in a process is almost always wasteful as your customers don’t pay for it (unless it’s an agreed delivery charge). The more you move things around, the more likely they are to get lost or damaged, so quality will suffer. Communication will also suffer when things are transported over long distances, but this can apply as much to moving things around within one building. If you move 30 boxes only 100 yards you’re travelling a total of 6000 yards (counting going back each time for the next one!)

4. Inappropriate Processes
Think “using a sledgehammer to crack a nut”. Are you using a very sophisticated machine to make something very simple? Is someone with valuable qualifications and experience doing the filing? It works the other way round too – e.g. printing hundreds of brochures on a cheap ink-jet printer!

5. Unneccesary Inventory
Having no stock and making everything to order is a virtual impossibility for most businesses. However Lean recognises that having masses of inventory is a big waste, and can be reduced in most cases.

6. Unneccesary Motions
This refers mostly to ergonomics. Are your people having to repeatedly stretch, bend, pick-up, move in order to see something etc… If so this may have implications not only for their health & safety, but for the quality and efficiency of your product or process.

7. Defects
Defects are always costly. If they’re internal this leads to scrap, wasted material and the time spent to do the job again. Defects on products or services that have been delivered lead to field repairs, refunds, additional transportation costs and potential lost custom.

So – those are Lean’s 7 deadly wastes. The next big question is – how do you get rid of them?!

Lean is basically a toolkit that will help you to do just that, and these tools are covered in our range of Lean training courses.

The Lean training courses available include:

Lean Awareness (1-day)
This comprehensive introductory Lean training course provides an overview of Lean principles and tools and how your organisation can work towards leaner processes

Lean Processes & Tools (3-days)
This practical hands-on Lean training course provides a more in-depth understanding of Lean processes and tools – delegates will leave this course with a sound practical understanding of how to apply Lean to their processes.

Value Stream Mapping (2-days)
This 2-day training course will enable delegates to identify their processes Value Streams, produce a Value Stream map and develop a Kaizen improvement plan

For more information on these Lean training courses or to arrange a booking, please call our office on 01273 622272 or e-mail us at bookings@siliconbeachtraining.co.uk

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Lean, Lean Principles, Lean Processes, Lean Six Sigma, Lean Training, Lean Training Courses

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This entry was posted by Colin Welch on Wednesday, October 7th, 2009 at 3:12 pm and is filed under Lean & Six Sigma. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.

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