The Fifth Form of Waste - INVENTORY

Too much inventory wastes your money.  Basically inventory is your money just sitting around doing nothing but collecting dust.  There are many ways to address the minimizing of inventory, however they all come down to a basic premise - understand your market demand and your customer trends.  It is not wise to just wildly product product or order product for the rainy day without some thought behind your reasoning.  This is true also not only in business but in daily life.  Understand your key products to be produced.  What are the key process components that are critical to keep up with market demand.  Keep track of order trends using statistical analysis techniques, some of which are basic and I can implement a system for you to easily implement and understand.  Having just any spare part on hand is not cost effective either.  Understand your downtime trends and critical to quality characteristics and components.  For more helpful advice - give me a call.  Follow my link to my website.

THE THIRD FORM OF WASTE - TRANSPORT

The third form of wast that I'd like to discuss is transport.  The transportation of  goods externally from distribution centers to the consumer or the internal transport of assemblies of product in the manufacturing process.  Wasteful transport can also be inefficient means of transferring information within an office or business facility.  One rule of thumb that I've picked up from my experience in the optical glass industry is that minimizing the occurrences of handling adds value and security that the product will not be damaged.  Reducing or eliminating setup and tear-down times also adds to reducing non-value added activity.  I can baseline your current system through tools such as a spaghetti diagram and standard work combination chart to address the excessive transport in your operation.

OVERPRODUCTION - Part II in the SEVEN FORMS of WASTE Series

It's time now to end the waiting and move on to and discuss the second form of waste, overproduction.  Making too much of something or buying too much of something leads to your hard earned dollars just sitting there on the shop floor, in your closet or in your garage doing nothing.  In the meantime you could redirect those dollars towards something more productive and value added.  Un-necessarily high business costs, including manufacturing labor and overhead costs are incurred when you make too much of something out of pace with the market demand.  I can help.  I can look at your business and baseline your current production plans compared to the market demand trends in your industry and implement more efficient methods in order to free up much needed dollars in these economic times.

THE SEVEN FORMS OF WASTE - PART I (WAITING)

Waiting is a form of waste.  In lean six sigma terms the objective is to eliminate the wasteful activities that do not bring value to your process or operation.  Nobody likes to wait.  Both internal and external customers will be happier with your performance by eliminating or reducing as mush as possible wait times for delivery as well as between process steps.  Methods used to highlight the value and non-value added components of your process include value stream mapping, and standard work combination diagrams.  I can take a look at your process and help seek out alternatives to the waiting in your processes.

A CULTURE OF CHANGE

Implementing lean and six sigma methodology to make your business better will not succeed unless you acknowledge that it is a cultural change.
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