All businesses are full of waste. Moreover, the waste is preventing you from higher profit, shorter lead times, better quality, less headaches, better teamwork, reduced costs and so much more.
There are eight forms of waste that you need to be looking for at all times. The first seven were originally identified by Taiichi Ohno, the late Toyota executive who also pioneered other Lean concepts such as JIT and TPS. Each of these categories of waste should be treated with equal importance, none are more important than another.
1. Transportation - Using people to move material, information and supplies is a waste. Ideally, any and all transportation should be automated. People need to be used for value added work and moving stuff around is NOT value added work. Examples of transportation waste would be people pushing stuff on carts from here to there and forklifts moving material/pallets around.
2. Inventory - No inventory is ideal, but sometimes a small buffer inventory is needed due to lead times or minimum order quantities. Anywhere inventory is needed there should be a kanban in place to manage the inventory based on pull from the customer.
3. Motion - This waste is all about ergonomics. Everything needed for a task should be within arms reach; moreover, there shouldn't be any excess bending, turning or reaching for tools or parts.
4. Waiting - Waiting for ANYTHING is a waste; people, material, supplies or information.
5. Over Production - Making too many _____. Have you ever made too many copies of a document? Have you ever produced more widgets "just in case"? Do you double-enter information anywhere in you business/supply chain? If you answered yes, then you're producing waste.
6. Over Processing - This is using inappropriate tools to achieve a quality product or service. Two great examples would be using a dull axe to chop down a tree or cracking a walnut using a sledgehammer.
7. Defects - These are any mistakes or errors, both internally and externally. If a product is produced that does not meet the customer's expectations then a defect has been produced. When a process produces a defect the process should stop immediately, fix the problem that created the defect and only when the problem (and the root of the problem) is corrected should the process continue.
8. Skills - Whenever you don't take full advantage of your people's talents and abilities then you are wasting them. Involve your people in problem solving, kaizen and improving your business.
Tim Woods, just remember Tim Woods and you will remember the eight forms of waste. What do I mean by Tim Woods? Look at the first letters of each of the wastes. Taa daaaa.
Now what? Get out from behind your desk, talk to your people/team, go to the gemba, look for the waste and ask your team to help.
Vision
Thursday, February 28, 2013
Sunday, February 24, 2013
No Excuses!
There's always an opportunity to come up with an excuse. Why? Why do people make excuses?
My feeling is that there's a few reasons why people make excuses; they don't want to deal with a potential failure, it's going to be hard work, and/or they're worried what others might say. There's probably a lot more reasons why people make excuses, but these three are the main ones. You are stronger than these things!
The famous quote that comes to mind is by the Star Wars movie character Yoda, who said "Do or do not, there is no try." Excuses fall somewhere between 'do' and 'do not', in the same place where 'trying' lives.
If you're looking for the pathway to success then you have to take the path that is free of trying and excuses. The first step on the path to success starts with choice and discipline, the choice to walk the path and the discipline to stay on the path despite distractions, bad habits and temptations to get off the path. A choice to make excuses is a choice to accept mediocrity, and if that's your choice then be happy with it and don't regret the outcome. What I believe is that we all have a choice between regret and discipline. What do you choose? I choose discipline.
Don't give up, persist. Don't try, do. Don't complain, influence. Don't keep doing the same, change. Don't settle, succeed.
My feeling is that there's a few reasons why people make excuses; they don't want to deal with a potential failure, it's going to be hard work, and/or they're worried what others might say. There's probably a lot more reasons why people make excuses, but these three are the main ones. You are stronger than these things!
The famous quote that comes to mind is by the Star Wars movie character Yoda, who said "Do or do not, there is no try." Excuses fall somewhere between 'do' and 'do not', in the same place where 'trying' lives.
If you're looking for the pathway to success then you have to take the path that is free of trying and excuses. The first step on the path to success starts with choice and discipline, the choice to walk the path and the discipline to stay on the path despite distractions, bad habits and temptations to get off the path. A choice to make excuses is a choice to accept mediocrity, and if that's your choice then be happy with it and don't regret the outcome. What I believe is that we all have a choice between regret and discipline. What do you choose? I choose discipline.
Don't give up, persist. Don't try, do. Don't complain, influence. Don't keep doing the same, change. Don't settle, succeed.
Sunday, February 10, 2013
Why I'm Successful
My success maxims: There is no one definition of success. Despite what you may read, there is not a set of magical steps that will get you to success. You should never let anyone prevent you from getting to your success. There is only one person responsible for your success, you.
With that being said, here are my own principles that I follow and what I believe make me successful.
Choice and Discipline - Everything in life is a choice; your health, career, relationships and everything else. Depending on what you want to get out of life you will need to achieve certain things to get there. For example, if you want to be in good health then you're going to have to make a choice to eat a balanced diet and exercise. Now comes the discipline... You know what the choice should be to achieve good health, but do you have the discipline to stick with it every day, week, month, year and so on? If success is your goal, then discipline is essential to get there.
Success is being happy with my choices - The choices I make define who I am. I don't regret any choices I've made in my life, and for the choices that didn't turn out as I would have liked, I choose to learn from them rather than regret.
Balance is essential - So many people say they want balance but don't follow up, not me. An average weekday for me looks like this... Starting at 5AM after 7-8 hours sleep... Workout (45 min.), work with passion (9-10 hours), family time (2-3 hours), improve myself through reading, writing, hobby or anything (1 hour), leaving a couple hours for meals, travel or adding a bit to the other areas. Weekends, replace the work piece with family time. This is my balance.
Start with Why? - This is a relatively new principle for me, one that I picked up only a few months ago. It stemmed from a TED Talk that I watched of Simon Sinek titled "How Leaders Inspire Action". If you haven't watched it I highly recommend you do. The concept is that most people start with What, then How and finally (yet rarely) figure out with Why they do things. Simon says (no pun intended) start with Why? Then go to How and end with What. By starting with WHY you do something you will give meaning and purpose to everything you do; moreover, when you start with Why, the How and What take care of themselves.
Kaizen - Kaizen is a Japanese word for continuous improvement that means many things to me. Most significantly, kaizen is a passion to make things better, reflection, respect for others, knowing what I can influence and not allowing the things that I can't influence to affect me.
Be myself, everyone else is already taken - There's not much more I can say about this, it's pretty self explanatory.
Keep learning and reading - I read as much as I can, a chapter each day is my goal. I believe that in order to fuel personal growth and to keep my mind sharp that need to keep reading and feeding my brain. During an acceptance speech at the Teen Choice Awards, Will Smith talked about the keys to life being running and reading, check it out on Youtube.
Exercise - My gut feeling is that we all tend to ignore the fact that we're not going to live forever. On top of that, as we go through life we also tend to ignore our health until a health crisis forces us to change destructive habits or even worse, when it's too late for change. If you're one of these people it's never too late, and if you're not one of these people then I commend you. Regular exercise will not make you live forever, but it will definitely allow you to enjoy your time on this Earth with more energy and more years than if you don't achieve regular exercise.
I'll leave you with this... Don't settle for mediocrity. Find your success, whatever it is, and go get it.
With that being said, here are my own principles that I follow and what I believe make me successful.
Choice and Discipline - Everything in life is a choice; your health, career, relationships and everything else. Depending on what you want to get out of life you will need to achieve certain things to get there. For example, if you want to be in good health then you're going to have to make a choice to eat a balanced diet and exercise. Now comes the discipline... You know what the choice should be to achieve good health, but do you have the discipline to stick with it every day, week, month, year and so on? If success is your goal, then discipline is essential to get there.
Success is being happy with my choices - The choices I make define who I am. I don't regret any choices I've made in my life, and for the choices that didn't turn out as I would have liked, I choose to learn from them rather than regret.
Balance is essential - So many people say they want balance but don't follow up, not me. An average weekday for me looks like this... Starting at 5AM after 7-8 hours sleep... Workout (45 min.), work with passion (9-10 hours), family time (2-3 hours), improve myself through reading, writing, hobby or anything (1 hour), leaving a couple hours for meals, travel or adding a bit to the other areas. Weekends, replace the work piece with family time. This is my balance.
Start with Why? - This is a relatively new principle for me, one that I picked up only a few months ago. It stemmed from a TED Talk that I watched of Simon Sinek titled "How Leaders Inspire Action". If you haven't watched it I highly recommend you do. The concept is that most people start with What, then How and finally (yet rarely) figure out with Why they do things. Simon says (no pun intended) start with Why? Then go to How and end with What. By starting with WHY you do something you will give meaning and purpose to everything you do; moreover, when you start with Why, the How and What take care of themselves.
Kaizen - Kaizen is a Japanese word for continuous improvement that means many things to me. Most significantly, kaizen is a passion to make things better, reflection, respect for others, knowing what I can influence and not allowing the things that I can't influence to affect me.
Be myself, everyone else is already taken - There's not much more I can say about this, it's pretty self explanatory.
Keep learning and reading - I read as much as I can, a chapter each day is my goal. I believe that in order to fuel personal growth and to keep my mind sharp that need to keep reading and feeding my brain. During an acceptance speech at the Teen Choice Awards, Will Smith talked about the keys to life being running and reading, check it out on Youtube.
Exercise - My gut feeling is that we all tend to ignore the fact that we're not going to live forever. On top of that, as we go through life we also tend to ignore our health until a health crisis forces us to change destructive habits or even worse, when it's too late for change. If you're one of these people it's never too late, and if you're not one of these people then I commend you. Regular exercise will not make you live forever, but it will definitely allow you to enjoy your time on this Earth with more energy and more years than if you don't achieve regular exercise.
I'll leave you with this... Don't settle for mediocrity. Find your success, whatever it is, and go get it.
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