Defects – the consequences of doing something wrong within the process<\/strong><\/p>\n <\/p>\n
My first understanding of\u00a0their power came to me\u00a0when I worked with Nestl\u00e9 and\u00a0assisted it in\u00a0developing and delivering its\u00a0Lean Learning Programme. I was privileged to work with many different lean experts in order to develop the course and one guy, John Papin, left a lasting impression. He was the first person who made me truly aware of the interconnection of the seven wastes. When we seek to improve a process, we often end up \u2018trading\u2019 the wastes in order to bring about a desired change. You often can\u2019t just reduce all of the wastes, you might increase one of them in order to decrease a waste that is less preferable. So, for example, it might be better to increase the amount of inventory that you\u00a0hold within a\u00a0warehouse as opposed to waiting for the goods to be produced, which has the knock-on effect of\u00a0making the customer wait. In this example, you\u00a0increase the inventory in order to reduce the waiting time.<\/p>\n
But what if all of our goods are becoming damaged when waiting in the warehouse (defects)? We might choose to increase the \u2018over-processing\u2019 and wrap them carefully in bubble wrap in order to reduce the amount of damages. When you look at the interconnection of wastes in this way, you can very quickly move to a position where you can start to see that step change innovation occurs when you can break free of\u00a0these trade-offs.<\/p>\n
I believe (and know) that big companies push for innovation to overcome these wastes and waste trade-offs. Amazon, for example. If you think about the \u2018inventory\u2019 that\u00a0is associated with loading a truck full of customers\u2019 goods and then the \u2018wait\u2019 experienced by a customer in order to deliver those products through multiple stops, you can quickly start to see how the prospect of recruiting drones to deliver single packages within a quick time frame, can start to be appealing. Such step change innovation within its\u00a0business model obliterates delivery inventory, waiting and potentially other wastes, too. However, even here, the wastes await. Are defects and damages more prevalent within drone delivery, for example?<\/p>\n
The Internet of Things\u00a0(IoT), a term that\u00a0refers to the transportation of goods around the world using the free access and sharing principles of the internet and its\u00a0rich data sharing capability, has the potential to reduce costs for suppliers and customers, and decrease\u00a0unnecessary transportation and waiting time for customers. The IoT also possesses the opportunity to provide a greener, more sustainable option for society, and this is where I think the use of the seven wastes as a mechanism to innovate can really fly.<\/p>\n
The wastes are, by their very nature, an unnecessary drain on resources. Understanding these resource drains is the first step in identifying a problem and then inciting innovative action in order to do something about it. Technology is often the key driver needed in order to overcome these wastes and bypass any \u2018waste trade-offs\u2019 that exist. Will 3D printing overcome the waste of inventory and transportation by enabling manufacturers, even customers, to create parts and products as close to where they are needed as possible? Will driverless cars overcome the waste of defects (crashes) and make the roads a safer place to be? Whatever the future holds, I\u2019ll bet that we\u2019ll see key innovations bursting through those wastes and bringing benefit to suppliers and customers alike.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"It appears that innovation, while far from a new concept, is now the hotly sought after \u2018ingredient\u2019 that organisations are desperate to harness, adopt, nurture and grow. I have been […]","protected":false},"author":151,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_feature_clip_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[],"custom_author":[44],"class_list":["post-52","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-innovation","category-lean","custom_author-sarah-lethbridge"],"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"meta_box":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/151"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=52"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":54,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/52\/revisions\/54"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=52"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=52"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=52"},{"taxonomy":"custom_author","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.cardiff.ac.uk\/sarahlethbridgelean\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/custom_author?post=52"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}