What is MUDA? Part II of II

What is MUDA? Part II of II

This post is in continuation to our post last week where we wrote about What is muda and muda of Overproduction, Inventory, Waiting & Transportation.Simply speaking muda is the opposite of value, that is, anything that the customer is not willing to pay for. This is the biggest obstruction to productivity improvement or process excellence.

The next 4 MUDA’s that we are going to write about are:

muda of Motion

In contrast to muda of Transportation, muda of Motion refers to movement of People. Every movement of an employee, that does not immediately add value, is wasteful. Movement to pick up parts or tools, setting the machine, transferring parts to the next operation is all wasteful movements. KAIZEN™ thinking strives to reduce unnecessary movements through layout improvements, improvement in work distribution and balancing of tasks, machine design.

 

muda of Defects

We lose money when something is manufactured, assembled or serviced twice, while our customers will only pay once for the goods or service.

When an error or defect is caused and passed on to the next operation, or still worse, it is passed on to the customer, we are accepting rework as a part of the process.

The production of enormous parts leads to cost of additional material usage, additional effort, requirement of additional capacity for post treatment, additional transportation, additional control, workspace for restruc­tured inventory and repairs.

muda of over processing

Over processing wastes are caused by making a product or service better than a customer needs or is willing to pay for. Not closely monitoring how customers use our product or services leads us to build in or provide features that we think they want or need without knowing for sure. Any such additional features are not value addition in the eyes of the customer. Sometimes this muda also refers to muda within a process ar­riving out of damaged tooling, out of control processes, poor finishing and handling, poor organization and housekeeping.

 

Under utility of human potential / Knowledge disconnect:

In the opinion of some thinkers there is an 8th muda when people within the organization cannot be utilized to their full potential. The organization as such misses out on those abilities of the human resource it has at its disposal.

Others also consider disconnects in knowledge within the organization or with suppliers and customers as another form of Muda. Such disconnects inhibit the flow of knowledge, ideas and creativity, causing frustra­tion and missed opportunities.

muda in the office

muda can be found everywhere and the office function or service organizations are no exception. However, Waste in office operations are, more often, not easily visible or noticeable. It gets hidden in the outward im­pression that the office presents. The requirement of an extra signature, a delayed response to an enquiry or complaint, two people doing the same work on different systems with different numbers are all examples of waste that are not easy to see and remain hidden.

The chart above gives a break up of numerous types of losses that one could experience in an office depart­ment. A good portion of the time that a staff spends in the office is lost during to the various losses described above.

Hence just like on the manufacturing shop floor. KAIZEN™ in the office aims to identify and eliminate waste (or losses) in office operations.

In case you missed it, my last post was What is MUDA? Part I of II.

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