Question

Kaizen process that most of us are familiar with and demonstrates how the tools of Lean can be used to improve the process. Select another simple process that you are familiar with (possible examples include - unloading a dishwasher, getting ready to leave the house in the morning, ordering food at a drive up window, studying for an exam, or any process you've carried out multiple times) Identify at-least 3 forms of waste in the process and then select 3 of the tools from Lean to improve each the forms of waste you identified.

Answer 1

Let us take the example of buying groceries/daily need items which we do buy most of very frequently.

The three waste in the process can be identified by mapping the entire flow of the process to get the task completed. Once we map the entire process right from preparing to go to the department store and reaching back to the home we can find out three waste.

1. Wait time at the billing counter ( Waste is Wait time)

2. Purchasing the products which are already there at home (Waste is over purchase and building up an unnecessary inventory of items)

3. Travel time and fuel expense for the store which I find very attractive even though it is far away from my home (waste is excessive motion which is costing time and money on fuel)

Hence the three typical waste identified are Time wastage, Over procurement, and excessive motion.

The three tools which we will use for each of them are as follows:

1. For wait time at billing counters, we will do the Gemba walk, we will buy the groceries on different days at the same time like one on any working day Monday to Friday and then one on Saturday evening and one on Sunday evening. We will figure out when there was the least queue at the billing counter and will make that day and time as a preferred time for the purchase of groceries. This will help in saving time which was wasted while standing in a long queue.

2. For excessive procurement: we will use 5 whys where every time why question will be asked, till the time we reach the primary reason for the waste being generated. Let us start,

why excessive purchase - Because I did not know what is there at home and what is not there.

Why I did not know what is there at home and what is not the - Because I did not check the stock at home

Why I did not check the stock at home- Because I don't have a monthly tracker of items

Now we got the reason, hence we will take the stock and will make a list of items to be purchased. This will help in reducing unwanted spending and storing unnecessary items.

3. For Excessive motion we will conduct the root cause analysis: For this, we can create a root cause analysis and can identify the actual reason for excessive motion by traveling too far to get a store. The reason could be I am not aware of other store which might be very near to my home. Therefore, we can find a similar store near to my place of residence and will start buying from there.