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For the last ten years Jim Womack, co-author of three best-selling books on lean ¹, has been advising people to start their lean initiatives by going after waste (muda). Only after a concerted effort at that has he said to pursue reductions in variation (mura) and overburdening (muri). I never quite understood why he was so adamant. I just learned that he's changed his mind. In his latest email LEI newsletter Jim gives the following advice:

"Take a careful look at your mura and your muri as you start to tackle your muda. Ask why there should be any more variation in your activities than called for by customer behavior. Then ask how the remaining, real variation in customer demand can be smoothed internally to stabilize your operations. Finally ask how overburdens on your equipment and people — from whatever cause — can be steadily eliminated."

At Lean Project Consulting, we've given that advice for years. First, make sure the project has the appropriate resources for the challenges expected. Next, attack variability of promised task completion using the Last Planner System® ². When you do those two things the project will be stable. Then it is time to attack waste using Project kaizen.

Jim finished his essay with a little warning and encouragement:

"This will be hard work and will require courage because it will often require you to rethink longstanding sales, management, and accounting practices that create the mura and muri. However, if you can eliminate mura and muri at the outset to create a stable environment for your sales, operations, and supply management teams, you will discover that muda can be removed much faster. And once removed it will stay removed."

I can agree with Jim on the hard work, particularly on projects. Overburdening is just the way it is. Way too often projects start without the full complement of staff. The right people might be stuck finishing up a late project. Or, the project started late for whatever reasons requiring people to be assembled in a making do fashion. Starting projects well makes all the difference to finishing projects well.

Let's all thank Jim Womack. Lean projects require an all our attack on muri, mura, and muda — in that order.

1. The Machine that Changed the World, Lean Thinking, and Lean Solutions [ ⇑ back ]
2. Registered trademark of the Lean Construction Institute, www.leanconstruction.org. [ ⇑ back ]