The A team gets an F
Lean Production, based on the Toyota Production System, recognizes 7 wastes:
- Transportation. Moving something from one spot to another does not make it worth more.
- Inventory. If a miser saves all of his money, what good does it do him? If a company has more product than someone is ready to pay for, what is it worth?
- Motion. Any kind of walking, reaching, moving, touching, searching, or other motion, which does not directly make the work in progress closer to what the customer will pay for, is a waste of time and money.
- Waiting. When a worker waits, he is being paid to do nothing. When a product waits, it is not returning money to the company.
- Overproduction. As long as you are making a perfect product, which will never need to be fixed, updated, or changed, and which somebody will always buy, you can make as much as you want. Otherwise you should only make as much as you can sell now, before something changes.
- Overprocessing. If you spend time and money to put a pretty design on a part that is going to unseen inside of the finished product, you have wasted your money. Anything you do that the customer does not want is a waste.
- Defects. If you inspect for defects and you do not find any, you have wasted time. If you find a defect, you will have to repair it or scrap the part entirely. If you have to rework a part you are paying twice for a part that the customer will only pay for once.
The A-Team came to Acme with a mandate from on high, and scared all the management into not questioning any of their decisions. They set about with steely resolve to drastically reduce the waste of Inventory, and this they did–mainly by increasing Transportation.