Lean manufacturing waste includes wasted material, avoidable downtime, inaccurate matching of resources to tasks, unproductive activities, and overproduction. Manufacturing defects and operator errors can also cause waste. Planned downtime is preferred to reduce personnel costs, while unplanned downtime results in more waste. Unproductive activities can involve unnecessary movement or tasks not part of the production routine.
Various types of lean manufacturing waste include wasted material, avoidable downtime, and time wasted on unproductive activities. Overproduction is another form of waste. Other types of waste can come from inaccurate matching of resources to tasks or from making unnecessary moves in the workplace.
Manufacturing defects are a common means of causing material waste. Sometimes these defects result from machinery that has not been properly maintained or used inappropriately. Another type of lean manufacturing waste can occur during those stages of production where the raw material is shaped or cut for a specific purpose. If that process goes awry due to operator error, the part often has to be rejected as scrap.
Unplanned or planned downtime can result in wasted facility usage and man-hours. When an assembly line is down, such as due to equipment failure, underutilization of that resource results in lean manufacturing waste. Typically, unplanned downtime will produce more waste than planned shutdowns. A common reason cited is lack of time to plan for a controlled cessation of production.
For example, if the assembly line shuts down at a time when full operations have been planned and both materials and people have been positioned to engage in productive work, that event will likely create a large amount of wasted time. On the other hand, if the outage is planned, production managers will usually arrange for the fewest personnel to be on site during the shutdown. Such pre-planning usually reduces personnel costs.
Inaccurate matching of resources to activities is another type of lean manufacturing waste. Sometimes this may involve harnessing the skills of a highly skilled person to perform a task that a less trained person could perform. Other times, it can result in a mismatch between equipment and activity. For example, if a worker is attempting to complete a task with a machine that is not specifically suited to that task, time could be wasted.
Unproductive activities can also involve performing unnecessary activities and can occur in a couple of ways. First, the person performing the activity may be engaging in extra movement that is not necessary to complete the activity, and second, the activity may not even be part of the planned production routine that the manufacturer has put in place. deed. For example, if a worker must regularly transport a certain amount of partially completed materials, he may choose to engage another employee in conversation at another workstation. While it may seem like an almost insignificant factor in lean manufacturing waste, when that activity is repeated multiple times a day or week, the cost of unproductive time adds up.
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