c






  



The following is a more common sense approach.

Priority #1.   
is the worst of the wastes because a) it multiplies the other 6 wastes, and
b) it hides your true capacity, thereby causing you to make bad decisions such as turn work away or
invest in unnecessary additional capacity.

Priority #2.    come next because it is as close to pure waste as you can get when you produce
unacceptably poor quality. Time, energy and materials are consumed needlessly, and if the customer is
not lost, you still need to do the work again.

Priority #3.    is a good candidate for the next worst of the 7 wastes. It ties up cash, requires
labor, energy and fixed assets (warehouse) to manage it, and perhaps worst of all provides a false sense
of comfort by hiding problems (buffering).

Priority #4. 
waste is a close candidate for inclusion in the top 3, and may even be number one if
the human movements are injurious or unsafe. In terms of ease of elimination and size of improvement
impact, the waste of motion ranks very high and is often the target of kaizen.

Priority #5. c  
 waste simply means that a process is not necessary or uses more resources
(energy, steps, time or materials) then the customers' needs require. These are quick wins once
identified, and can be high impact but are not as common as the other 6 types of waste.

Priority #6.   
 is quite visible and clearly adds no value, yet by itself not such a huge waste.
This waste can shoot up the priority list whenever it increases the chance of defects (damage),
processing (tagging, logging items in and out, counting) and creating inventory (moving in batches to
save travel).

Priority #7.


 is the least harmful because at least you are not consuming resources other than
labor, and by not overproducing, transporting, or wasting motion the chance of accidents, defects and
creating additional inventory is minimized. As hard as it may be, it is best to tell people "Wait, don't
overproduce" so that they can pull the andon cord and make the problem visible.

This list is manufacturing-oriented. For healthcare, defects is by far the first highest priority waste for all
out elimination. Defective parts you can scrap or correct, but people not so much. For various other
types of knowledge work, the relatively high cost of labor and low cost of materials brings waiting and
processing to the top of the list and may move inventory down the list. For distribution operations
whose main value is storing and moving things, inventory and transportation may need to be
understood differently to give meaningful priority to attacking the 7 types of waste.

Getting rid of the 7 types of waste is fundamental to the Toyota Production System and to building a
Lean culture in any enterprise. There is no clear prioritizing by badness of the 7 types of waste in the
classic TPS literature, and deep debate on this topic is probably time that could be better spent making
even one small improvement on the gemba.