The 7 Different Wastes of Manufacturing

Every manufacturing plant is bound to have waste in one way in another. From the way in which you have employees doing their job duties to the overproduction of products and other things, waste can be found in a number of different ways. It is important that you take time to look at how you can eliminate wastes from the company so that you can increase your bottom line but also to find ways to become more effective with satisfying your customers. One of the most successful programs that can aid in waste reduction is known as lean manufacturing. Developed by Toyota, lean manufacturing has long been one of the best programs on the market to provide you with a way to identify a number of different wastes within your company and then to create methods to properly eliminate them. The goal is to give you not only waste reduction but higher quality products and services to provide to your customers.When you use lean manufacturing you will find that there are about 7 different wastes that you need to identify and remove from the organization to have success.

Overproduction.
This is a waste that can happen to many different manufacturing plants. You often have overproduction in the way that you produce your products as you may not have your system organized effectively. Many companies will produce too many products and then they have to warehouse them and it becomes a waste of money. Your goal is to end up producing products for the customers when they are ordered. This is the best way to save money for the company and to give your customers freshly produced products that will not lose their value.

Waiting.
Do you have employees that are standing around and being paid for it? What about equipment that is sitting and not being used? Anything that is waiting is a waste to the company.

Transporting.
Working with the wrong shipping company can be expensive and you may end up dealing with expensive transportation costs to get your products out to your customers. On the other hand you have to consider the transportation methods to get the raw goods from your suppliers.

Equipment Costs
Do you have the "best" equipment on the market? There are some companies that feel the need to invest a ton of money into equipment that they honestly do not need to have and this can be considered a waste. If your existing machinery is working fine, you won't need to change it out. You need to look at how much money you are wasting for equipment costs and to consider re-evaluating these costs as well.

Inventory
We talked about this briefly but inventory is a waste. You have to rent out a warehouse to hold products that have yet to be sold. In the meantime these products are sitting on shelves and are collecting dust. It's not a pretty picture for you or for the customers. Decrease the size of your inventory and make your products to order so they don't need to be warehoused.

Motion
What is motion exactly? This is where you have employees running around like chickens without heads as they are trying to find things that they need to do their job. Whenever you have excess motion that can be changed through proper organization, you have a waste.

Defects
Of course a big waste for the company is when you have product defects. Any time you have a recall or you have products that you cannot sell, it racks up your costs and it is a huge waste to the organization.