Finding consenus about "waste" in organisations

"It looks like we have consensus"

Rainer Erne 28.01.2020

A consensus about, firstly, that there is waste in our organisation, secondly, that this has to be identified and, thirdly, reduced, can be attained within minutes. A consensus about what exactly can be attributed as "waste" and how this "waste" could be minimised takes, in contrary, weeks, months and sometimes years

The details about the "what" and "how" is the source for countless debates which appears to many as waste in itself. A kind of "meta-waste" which consists in discussing about waste without eliminating a piece of it.

In this case also references to the management tool "systematic waste disposal" (Malik 2015) do not help since it only indicates the necessity and the infrastructure but not the details.

In order to bring the discussion about waste in organisations to results a common point of reference which is mutually agreeable is key. This point of reference is to be seen in the user of an organisation's contributions - not in "general stakeholders". Only if it is clear for everybody that the purpose of an organisation is to provide value to an external customer waste is identifyable.

If the reference point is clear and generally accepted everything gets under "waste suspicion" which does not deliver any value to the external customer. A proportion of it may be maintained as "support performance" ("waste type I"). Yet a major deal can be viewed and reduced from this perspective clearly as "idle performance" ("waste type II") (Ohno 1989; Womack & Jones 2003).

This may be of relevance especially for non profit organisations for which it might be more difficult to identfy "their customer" in contrast to profit organisation.

Literature:

Malik, F. (2015) Managing, performing. living: effective management for a new world. Frankfurt, Campus

Ohno, T. (1989) Toyota Production System: beyond large-scale production. Cambridge, Productivity Press

Womack JP, Jones DT (2003) Lean Thinking: banish waste and create wealth in your corporation. 2nd ed. New York, Free Press