Subject areaProcess and organisation
Muda (Japanese for waste) is any activity that consumes resources without adding value for the customer.
In the Toyota Production System, Taiichi Ohno classified seven kinds: overproduction, waiting, transport, overprocessing, inventory, unnecessary motion, defects. At its root, lean is the systematic hunt for muda.
Outside the factory the seven categories survive intact. In marketing and sales muda takes the form of content nobody reads, leads handed to sales and never called back, reports compiled and never opened, approvals that stall a campaign for days. Naming it is the first step, because a waste with a name can be measured.
Source: Taiichi Ohno, Toyota Production System: Beyond Large-Scale Production, 1988.
An example
In a financial services firm every sales proposal goes through a chain of sign-offs before it reaches the client. The real work on the proposal takes a few hours, the rest is waiting between one signature and the next: the muda of waiting, second of the seven.
Enrico Giubertoni. Licensed under CC BY-NC 4.0: you may quote, translate and adapt this entry with the author’s name and a link, stating any changes. For commercial use, write to info@enricogiubertoni.com
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