Lastest Discussion of 8th Waste
August 24th, 2008 by HalOver at NWLean there's been quite a riff on the 8th waste. Eventually, the contributors concluded that recreating knowledge is the one true 8th waste. While it's hard to argue with any of the writers' arguments, getting at the roots of that waste is where we can begin to take effective action.
Waste in production, services, healthcare and construction are pervasive and seemingly intractable. Ohno and others noticed that. We've also noticed that the opportunity for waste reduction is right in front of us. All we have to do is tap the ingenuity of the workforce. The key question for me is, "What gets in the way of doing so?" It was that question that led Greg Howell and I to observe participants in the construction process.
We found two big issues. People saw the opportunity for reducing waste but said nothing about it. And others were told about opportunities for reducing waste but weren't listening. We named these the "two great wastes" — not speaking and not listening. [See our paper presented to IGLC-11, Two Great Wastes™.]
We find these two distinctions quite consistent with Ohno's and Shingo's views along with the views and practices of Toyota today. These two wastes stand in stark opposition to "respect for people." Toyota's countermeasures for the two great wastes include: workplace observation, reviewing A3 reports with report writers, stopping the line, decision-by-consensus, etc. The resilience of The Toyota Way, rather than the collection of lean techniques and practices, is based on pervasive engagement with each other throughout the organization. Easy to understand, now let's do it.
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August 27th, 2008 at 1:20 am
Convincing! “Recreating knowledge” definitely deserves a place on the list. It’s more general than “not listening” and “not speaking”. Both of them seem to boil down to communication issues (risk) or lack of efficient communication altogether. However, there is more to it than sharing information. After all, process improvement is about learning and using that knowledge once and for all, isn’t it?
August 28th, 2008 at 2:57 pm
Hal, you connect two very important dots here.
One is the Great Wastes. It captures much, this tendency to not speak, this proclivity to not listen.
The second dot are the countermeasures to this waste: attention, consensus. I would add use of Socratic Method to involve others in learning.
Seeing the Waste and applying the countermeasures, relentlessly, is what us Lean Leaders need to do.
Thanks for the post.
September 10th, 2008 at 10:39 pm
I think one of the sources of these great wastes, and not only in construction, is the way ‘project’ has been traditionally defined. As I compare what is typically written about project management, and compare it with what is being written about management in general, I find that PM seems often to be about 5 decades behind! It often adopts a mechanistic command and control approach, with ‘management by objectives’ limitations that disparage the contributions of ‘doers’ to find improvement opportunities and adopt them and can disinvolve those with either actual or operational expertise.
So, how to define a ‘project’ to perhaps avoid this? Here’s my attempt:
A project occurs when people act together (make commitments) to invest their effort to produce a benefit or value in response to environmental flux (that is, changes in the relationships within the organisation’s network) or emergent opportunities.
This separates projects from ‘normal operations’ which occur with the general presumtion of environmental constancy, as in a production line, for intance, and locates a project in the interactions of an organisation and its business context; for instance, where a client sees a development opporutnity and ask for an effort to realise that opportunity.
October 14th, 2008 at 3:45 am
Couldn’t agree more. Our management model in fact would prevent “reinventing the wheel” wastes to accumulate over time. Re-use is the key that we are going to follow in future.
October 23rd, 2008 at 9:34 am
I’m late to this conversation, but our project work (hospital facility creation) has led us to understand that the 8th waste is more than re-creation of knowledge, it is the pure wasted opportunity to harvest all the IQ points around the table by enagaging all the brains on every project issue they’d like to weigh in on. Real-time conversational process…