This blog post on The 8 Wastes of Lean is a summary of one lesson in our online training course, The Lean Builder Master Class. (Click the link to take a free trial.)
The 8 Wastes of Lean
The 8 Wastes of Lean are real, but it’s often hard to imagine how you could have all eight happen on your job without a real-world example. I’m going to pull back the curtain and give you an example that I had from several years ago by allowing too much ductwork to come to my project at the wrong time.
With one decision, my job experienced all eight wastes.
Here’s how it went down:
I received a phone call from my mechanical contractor who said that he had great news. The production shop was able to put all of level two into the assembly line, so in two weeks he could deliver all the second floor.
I thought this was awesome news as well. We would be so much more productive and not have to wait for material deliveries. I told him to bring it on.
8 Wastes of Lean Examples
- At this point, when I agreed to bring all that ductwork onto the project site, I now had overproduction waste.
- Once that ductwork was delivered to my project and we got it all up on the second floor, I now had inventory waste. I had more ductwork on my site than I could effectively put in place within that week.
- At this point because of all that excess inventory, I now had motion waste. The craftspeople who should be putting the work in place had to shuffle the ductwork out of the way to let other scopes and trades get into level two to work.
- Because of this excess motion and moving that ductwork around the second floor, I now experienced defects. The ductwork crumbled up or was damaged as it went through a door frame or bumped into other materials. I had defective work that had to be fixed.
- To load up that defective work, I now had non-utilized talent. I had to take those craftspeople who should be putting the work in place and have them load up the damaged ductwork onto a truck to take back to the shop so the ductwork could be fixed.
- Once that ductwork was loaded on the truck, I now had transportation waste. I had to send the ductwork from the job site back to the manufacturing line to be remade resulting in additional transportation.
- Once that ductwork arrived back in the shop, I now had extra processing waste. The men and women on that assembly line at that ductwork shop had to reprocess my damaged ductwork versus building new ductwork to go into another job site.
- Lastly, we had waiting time. The craftspeople who should be putting work in place with the right material at the right time were waiting for the repaired ductwork to come back to the job site.
Being able to understand, articulate, and see the 8 wastes of Lean in real time is powerful. Use this knowledge to be ruthless and eliminate waste on your job site.
Want to Keep Learning?
This blog post is a summary of our The Lean Builder Master Class. The Eight Wastes training module includes videos on What Are the Eight Wastes; Eight Wastes Lifecycle Example; How to Manage Waste; and The Eight Wastes Recap.
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In total, our Master Class offers 47 videos and 11 resource downloads to help you implement Lean on your job site. We invite you to learn more and join us. Start your free trial.
Joe Donarumo, Linbeck Group
Joe Donarumo serves Linbeck as Vice President, Field Operations where he has been able to develop and lead high-performing field teams across Linbeck’s Healthcare market group. Joe also serves Linbeck as their Director of Lean Application, ensuring that Linbeck's Lean processes are continuously improved and consistently practiced and previously served as Senior Superintendent. Joe has a unique passion for Lean implementation, continuous improvement, and a ruthless pursuit of waste elimination within his projects, teams, and overall organization. Joe is also the Co-Author to The Lean Builder, a business fable written for field leaders and last planners to help them begin their Lean journey with respect to Lean implementation at the field level.
