2. The second step: moving a hand to push a button.
A complete waste. The worker’s hand is not holding anything
and is moving through empty air.
3. The third step: pushing the button.
During the instant it takes to push the button, the worker
is adding value to the workpiece. To be precise, this
button-pushing operation takes about one second,
assuming the press is a relatively small one weighing
about 100 tons. And while we are being precise, we
should note that even that one-second button-pushing
operation includes some waste. The time it takes the
upper die to reach the workpiece—the time the upper
die spends pressing nothing but air—is waste. And that
accounts for almost all of the time it takes to press the
workpiece. And we should also note that in this process,
it is the machine—not the worker—that adds the value.
4. The fourth step: moving a hand to remove the workpiece.
Again, the worker moves his hand through empty air.
All waste.
5. The fifth step: removing the processed workpiece, moving it,
and setting it down nearby.
Moving the workpiece is just handling time. All waste.
6. The sixth step: moving to pickup the next unprocessed
workpiece.
All motion, no work. All waste.
In this example, the easiest way to reduce waste is to
reduce the distance the worker must move in order to pickup
unprocessed workpieces and set down processed ones.
As just described, almost everything that happened in this
example was a form of waste. We should remember that anytime
“working” means taking workpieces down from shelves,
setting them down, or carrying them somewhere, it is not
actually “work,” but “motion.” And motion means waste.
Recently, companies have started to rationalize their conveyance
and improve their material handling procedures,
in many cases by introducing Automated Guided Vehicles
(AGVs) or other automatic material handling vehicles. These
devices are generally very well received in factories, since they
spare workers the chore of having to lug materials around.
But they should not be viewed so optimistically.
Generally, these automatic transport systems do little or
nothing to speed up material handling or shorten the distance
involved therein. The best approach is to think, “Let’s
cut off transport-related waste at the root.”
I call this kind of automation “skin-deep automation” or
“make-believe automation,” since in the final analysis it just creates
conveyance-related, equipment-related, and energy-related
waste. The genuine solution is to begin by organizing and
regulating the factory to improve the equipment layout to the
point where they no longer need conveyors of any kind. The
idea is to proceed with caution before adopting any simple
“automation” plan.
Lesson 11. Operations Should Flow Like a Clear Stream
Inherited Waste and Inherent Waste
No matter how good a factory is at manufacturing products,
you can bet that it stands knee-deep in waste. Starting with
the most obvious, we could cite a typical factory for having
too wide a “green belt” around it, having too large a building,
having management functions that no one seems to understand,
and so on.
Waste can be found hiding in even the most magnificent
factories. And in factories at the other end of the quality
spectrum, just about everything we see is waste.
I remember when, during one factory inspection tour, the
company president first led me into what appeared to be a
warehouse. Everywhere I looked I saw parts, products, and
boxes stacked almost to the ceiling. I advised that we look at
the factory and then come back to the warehouse. Then the
company president’s smile dropped into a frown as he said,
“This is the factory.”
In an attempt to lessen his embarrassment, I offered,
“Oh, I thought it was a warehouse since there aren’t any
workers here.”
But my host’s face only turned a brighter shade of red.
“No, they’re over there, behind those boxes,” he said.
He was right. There they were, hidden from view by stacks
of boxes, as if playing hide-and-seek.
The situation was so bad in that factory that I saw a
worker stretching to place more parts boxes on top of a stack
that was already too high. Like a stack of pennies, the stack
reached the point of instability and I began to wonder if it
would fall.
Just as I saw the stack swaying dangerously to one side,
another worker appeared out of nowhere just in time to help
set the stack even. The company president and I applauded
their fast-thinking teamwork.
Then I thought to myself, “It’s amazing that such a spirit of
cooperation survives in a place like this!”
This whole affair makes for a humorous anecdote, but
there is nothing funny about it as far as the company’s future
is concerned. In fact, there are a great number of factories
that are just as comical and just as pitiful. It is no exaggeration
to say that, in most cases, it is not a matter of finding
waste in the factory, but of finding the factory in the waste.
These days, I often hear of factories that, barely turning a
profit, suddenly decide to “rationalize” and “modernize” by
installing computer-based management and robot systems.
Meanwhile, waste lives on as a nonendangered species. The
waste lives on in new forms as the factory is reorganized,
computerized, and automated. JIT improvement experts call
this “systematic waste-making” and regard it with unmitigated
disgust.
Let us take an example of “waste-making computerization.”
Once a factory introduces a new production system, the
managers need to make up a new bill of materials. Such bills
of materials are used to indicate which parts are needed to
build which products. (See Figure 2.18.)
The various steps (or “layers”) in the production system
from the materials stage to the final product stage is called
the “depth” of the bill of materials. Generally, more complex
products have deeper bills of materials.
Consequently, some manufacturers are proud of having
very deep bills of materials, since this is seen as evidence of
how complex and sophisticated their products are. In most
cases, though, the depth of a bill of materials is much more
a function of how complicated the production system is than
a function of product complexity.
The reason why a part or assembly part gets established as
an item in the bill of materials is that the part requires some kind
of “management.” Generally, these kinds of items include: