In lean thinking, waste (the Japanese word muda) is anything that takes time, effort or money without adding value the customer would pay for. Taiichi Ohno, the engineer behind the Toyota Production System, described seven types of waste. An eighth, unused skills, was added later as lean spread beyond Toyota. Together they are often remembered as TIMWOODS.
The list was written for factories, but every small business has all eight. The value of the list is that it gives you something specific to look for.
| Waste | What it means | Small-business example |
|---|---|---|
| Transport | Moving materials, stock or paperwork more than needed | Two trips to the merchant for one job |
| Inventory | Stock or work sitting idle | Van stock nobody uses; quotes waiting to be typed |
| Motion | People moving more than needed | Walking to the printer; searching a shared drive |
| Waiting | People or work waiting for something | Waiting for parts, a decision, site access or a reply |
| Over-production | Doing work before it is needed | Reports nobody reads; batches made just in case |
| Over-processing | More effort than the customer values | Three sign-offs on a small purchase |
| Defects | Work that has to be done again | Callbacks, wrong invoices, rework |
| Skills | People's abilities going unused | A qualified engineer doing data entry |
Transport and motion are easy to confuse. Transport is about moving things; motion is about people moving their bodies, such as walking, reaching and searching.
In most service and trade businesses, waiting and defects cost the most. Waiting is invisible on a timesheet because people are still being paid while they wait. Defects are paid twice: once when the job is done badly and again when it is put right, often with travel on top.
Estimate how many hours each waste costs a typical person each week. Rough figures are fine for a first pass. The calculator turns them into an annual cost and ranks the wastes, so you know where to start.
The default figures are an illustration: five people each losing seven hours a week to waste, at £25 an hour, comes to 1,380 hours and £34,500 a year. That is 1,380 ÷ (37.5 × 46) = 0.8 of a full-time person.
An activity-sampling week, where people note what they are doing every 15 minutes, is a good way to measure waiting and motion without stopwatches. The time and motion study guide explains how.
Free Excel templates for time studies, debtor days and staff costs. Enter your email once and download them all.
Get the Free Templates →Want an independent view of your own numbers? See the Diagnostic Assessment.