Where does waste come from?
Often it is from mistakes,
errors and defects. These result in time lost, resources badly deployed
or overflowing waste bins. But why do we make these mistakes, errors
and defects? People don’t like getting things wrong and we
all go to some considerable length to make sure we avoid getting
things wrong, so what’s going on?
Are we really that clueless?
We found that most of the clearly visible wastes came from process
errors and these are sometimes known as the hidden wastes. (see
the page on the Hidden Construction Site
and the 8 Wastes)
Hidden wastes are everyday activities that do not add value. You
know exactly what we mean: the hanging around we all seem to do
- waiting for information, materials and resources so that we can
get on with our work; the over-ordering because we can save on
bulk-buy, except the stuff will spoil before we use it all; the
loops and hurdles we have to go through to get approval; unwieldy
working practices that make no sense... do we need to go on?
By now, you are thinking, how did the bright vision of our organisation
ended up in a hidden, shadow organisation that sucks away our resources,
efforts and motivation?
We found that the 8 Hidden Wastes are usually caused by:
- Poor Training;
- Poor Communications; and
- Poor Design.
How does training lead to waste?
Inappropriate training, the wrong
sort of training and irrelevant training all contribute to wastes.
The waste can also come from the cost of training and the inability
to realise the expected values thereafter.
A more nasty sort of waste is the potential problems that can be
caused by having the wrong methodology, skills, knowledge, or approach
towards the work. This is how poor training ends up making newspaper
headlines!
Design is a rather different issue.
We have all heard of well-designed products that customers declined
- just think of all the exciting new products you only catch once
in shops and supermarkets and never see again. People make mistakes
and it’s no different
whether it is designing a building or designing a poor process.
With both you are stuck with it to a certain extend - people still
live or work in awfully designed buildings, and similarly, process
design are also “sticky”,
good process designs do not always deliver results immediately
and poorly designed processes are often not spotted for a while
either.
Poor process design can also result in choosing a less effective
training programme - not that the training itself is poor, but
rather training people well for a poorly designed
system. This is not quite optimal business practices!
What causes poor process designs?
Often it is because we the designers
think we know it all! We do not communicate with the users of our
processes effectively to make sure they can actually work this
process and no create more waste.
Communications is a significant problem.
We all know that our audience may not be “hearing” the
same message that we are giving. (Of course, politicians rely on
this!). These simple misunderstandings in business, coupled with
poor training and design, can mean that the needs, requirements
and demands can be jumbled and misinterpreted. In globalised businesses,
poor communications is an even greater risk.
The situation of waste is like an iceberg. What we can see, the
visible wastes, are caused by the hidden wastes and at the heart
of the hidden wastes are the three linked root causes - poor training,
poor design and poor communications.
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