Title: Eliminating Waste
Course: BTEC-1300-301-302-303-F21 > Section: Lean Manufacturing and Waste

Completely eliminating waste is impossible, but if we keep the wastes in mind we can help reduce them in an effort to add greater value to our customer, products, services or processes.

This list is several approaches that STUDENTfacturED applies to the goal of reduction of waste:

1. Implementation of standard work documents or SWD. These documents creates a standard way of completing a process. Everyone is responsible for following the SWD.
  1. To contrast a WID tells us how to do something but leaves some flexibility, and a SWD creates a standard way of doing things that has been evaluated for efficiency. These documents will be discussed in more details in a future lesson.
2. A rigorous quality control process in place to remove any defective products, as well as to help identify future areas for elimination of waste.
3. We foster a culture of continuous improvement which includes technician empowerment to suggest improvements through kaizen cards. Technicians are the boots on the ground and have the most valuable input for reduction of waste.
4. Adherence to strict documentation standards, we use the data collected to improve our processes and to reduce waste.

Systematic elimination of these wastes can result in faster processes, lower costs, higher quality, happier workers, and, most importantly, happier customers.

Would you be happy if you were out at a nice steak dinner, when the bill comes it includes the steak you had and a charge for the steak the chef wasted by overcooking the steak meant for you. I don’t know about you, but I would definitely demand that it was removed from my bill. Why should I pay for the mistake of the chef?

Ironically any product that you purchase in a store the price that you pay will include those same types of costs. Did you know you pay the salary of idle machine operators while they were waiting for a delivery, or for the cost of reworking a machine because the machine was incorrectly calibrated, or even for storing your product for months before it is delivered to the store where you purchase it?  These wastes are included within the cost of your products, either inflating the price you pay or reducing the profit of the company.

In the next modules we will discuss some ways that we actually reduce waste instead of just identifying it.

Learning Objectives:

- 3.1 - Describe the different types of waste as they relate to the manufacturing process.