8 Buckets of Waste

Transportation: The unnecessary moving around of material, people and equipment often resulting in wasted time and possible damage.

Inventory: Excessive inventory that takes up valuable space, requires resources to manage it and ties up capital dollars.

Motion: Unnecessary and dangerous movement that can cause harm to people, damages to equipment, or defects in the product. This is different from Transportation since, in the case of people, we are talking about the ergonomic issues rather than the mere relocation of them.

Waiting: The waste of time waiting for people, equipment, materials, and information to arrive so that you can do your work.

Overproduction: Producing more than the customer or your process needs results in excess inventory and all the expenses described above under Inventory.

Overprocessing: Doing more than the customer wants, needs, or is willing to pay for.

Defects: The production of a defective product or delivery of service will require either a rework or a scraping of the product. The customer will not pay for either.

Skills: This waste was not originally included in Ohno’s original 7 Wastes but is certainly a valid waste. Skills are the waste of not using people’s talent, knowledge and experience to improve the organization.