Do you tolerate the waste?

by Dave Melhus

First, congratulations to the 2004 MRO All-Pros! The only way U.S. manufacturing will remain competitive is through talent such as yours. It’s great to see that your organizations have figured out how to unleash your potential. Believe it or not, you and your companies are the pioneers. Many companies understand the need but don’t provide the time for continuous improvement. Keep up the good work.

Second, interest in lean keeps gaining momentum. The Association for Manufacturing Excellence’s annual conference in October posted an attendance record. And, MRO Today’s third lean conference exceeded 115 participants. Fantastic!

The exciting news at these events is the expanding interest in lean beyond the shop floor. The most popular workshops and case studies focused on transactional applications, new product development, application engineering and supply chain management.

The AME attendees were treated to a speech by Atsushi Niimi, Toyota’s North American president. His talk harkened me back to when I was trained by Shingijitsu, a group of retired Toyota executives.

Mr. Niimi’s message was as brilliant as it was simplistic. His speech focused on two of Toyota’s guiding principles: Respect for Humanity and Respect for People.

In describing Respect for Humanity, one could see how Toyota embraces the concept in product development and its approach to developing a market. My takeaway was to not waste resources (earth’s limited resources, an economy’s wealth or society’s time) with products or services that fail to provide complete value. Toyota’s belief is to first understand a culture’s behavior, then discover a need, and finally create a product that fulfills the need.

It sounds simple, but how often have we created a product and then hoped it fulfilled a need? How often have we marveled at the new product development breakthroughs that were stumbled upon vs. the result of truly understanding market behavior? It’s easy to see waste from our own internal resources, but have we ever considered the waste or dissatisfaction in the marketplace?

How would such a commonsense approach to market and product development improve your company’s position? What paradigms prevent it from seeing the light?

The concepts behind the second principle, Respect for People, were equally enlightening. For years, the focus of waste elimination has been on “the seven wastes.” Many companies add safety and a lack of human creativity as the eighth and ninth wastes. While many believe they actively engage in seeking solutions from their human capital, Mr. Niimi addressed the root cause of how to unleash true potential. Two nuggets I took away from his comments on Respect for People were:

1) We show disrespect for our people by developing processes that add no value. Consuming their time on non-value-added processes limits available time to capture creativity.

2) We show disrespect for people by not setting challenging goals aimed at improving Respect for Humanity and Respect for People. How many of you would view failure to set challenging goals as a waste of Respect for People?

My belief is that while many can speak to the virtues of waste elimination, most have not internalized or personalized waste to the degree described by Mr. Niimi. Where would you place yourself on the “tolerance of waste” scale?

• Do you rationalize away the reasons for waste in your practices?

• Do you eliminate waste at a leisurely or convenient pace (improve when you have time)?

• Or, are you passionately intolerant and indignant that wasteful processes handcuff your organizations’ untapped human potential.

When put in the context of wasting people’s talent, it’s hard to believe each of us would not be uncomfortable with our pace of continuous improvement.

The highlight of Mr. Niimi’s presentation was the question-and-answer session. One person asked why Toyota hasn’t written its own book on how the Toyota Production System works. Mr. Niimi responded by saying the book would only be two pages long and “that would not make for a very good book.” He explained that “the TPS tools are basic; the complexities center around the application of the tools.”

Many believe that all they need to do is deploy the tools or copy an application of where the tools were deployed. While waste is eliminated and gains made, the true point is overlooked. The real gain is when you integrate the tools to achieve a specific business strategy. To learn how to incorporate lean into your strategies, drop me an e-mail.

Dave Melhus, the former vice president of operations for Iowa’s Vermeer Manufacturing, is currently a VP with Simpler Consulting. He can be reached at or by e-mailing .

Back to top                                Back to MRO Coach archives