How to spot and handle non-value-add work as a first-time manager
Waste is such a generally applicable word that—maybe—you never thought you might use it in a process, right? Truth be told, waste is an ever-present issue we must deal with in operations. It comes in many forms; it impacts every possible area it’s present in and will always adapt to new processes and systems. This seems a bit melodramatic, but that’s not the point. While waste is present and will probably always be, the real question is: how do I decrease it?
Waste will always drag down productivity, is always a stress factor, a pressure enabler, and in time can corrode the very core of the team if not managed properly. Since we have it all over the place, we need to learn how to deal with it. In this article, we will be doing just that. Here are the main points we will talk about today:
- Understanding Operational Waste
- DOWNTIME: the 8 types of waste causing the most harm
- How to Identify Waste
- How to Eliminate Waste
- Final Thoughts
Part I. Understanding Operational Waste
So, what is this waste anyway?
Well, waste is all about things that do not bring you any value and could be removed from your process. A very simple example would be this: let’s say you have to do a daily report that should go out to your customers by 11 AM. When you are doing the report, you manually add a lot of data points from different files (say this takes you about 20–30 minutes). You can eliminate this time by using Power Query, just creating a raw version of the report, and then just going in to make some final touches. The 20–30 minutes eliminated from the process fall under the waste category: time you used to spend on it that brings no value and can be removed from the process.
If you look close enough, you will find waste. Most people just assume it might be part of the process, some choose to ignore it or accept it’s just something there, while others might even embrace it. To better understand the concept, we need to think in a very binary way: what steps from my process are adding value, and what steps are not adding it? Value-added work is all about generating something that is helpful, while non-value-added work is something you do (like manually adding the information) that is not really creating anything of worth.
When a process has all these “hidden” inefficiencies, they tend to build up and create friction. Friction will then cause some less than desirable outcomes, like slower productivity, impact on team morale, and less profit. Think about it in simple terms: you have to manage a customer service team that needs to answer customer queries. You only have 20 people and they have to take calls, chats, and emails. Customers have different queries: billing, invoices, fraud, questions about their plan, cancelation, etc. Now let’s say you have a lot of requests about very simple topics that one can easily answer by the use of a proper IVR (a menu with options that will direct you to a desired section before getting you in contact with a real person). By not having this option, all requests are sent to your team; this will increase waiting time, will impact schedules, will create higher volumes of work, and results in less happy customers. It’s a lose-lose situation.
Teams that are not able to adapt, continuously improve, and properly scan their processes for waste are not efficient teams, and in time they fail. As a lead, your job is to be a spokesperson for this topic and make sure you are on top of it. To help you with this, Lean Six Sigma has plenty of tools. Now before we deep-dive into it, let’s talk a bit about Lean and Six Sigma.
Lean is a framework for waste identification and removal. It’s a set of principles, a way of working that will help you assess how much waste you have in your process and what is the best way to remove it. So now whenever you hear the word Lean, just think of waste.
Six Sigma on the other hand is all about variation control. Its core principle is: variation is bad; the more you have of it, the worse it gets. Think about it like fast food: every burger looks the same, tastes the same, and has the same price. Why should I pay 5 bucks for a burger that is smaller and less tasty than another person who paid the same but received a bigger and tastier one?
Part II. DOWNTIME: the 8 types of waste causing the most harm
DOWNTIME is an acronym created to help people identify waste faster. Each letter stands for a specific type of waste.
- D – Defects
- O – Overproduction
- W – Waiting
- N – Non-Utilized Talent
- T – Transport
- I – Inventory
- M – Motion
- E – Extra Processing
Defects
A defect is a part of the process that was not done according to specifications. It can be a step from said process or an output, but the main idea is that it is wrong, incorrect, not as it should be. Defects are a type of waste because they can’t be used as is, and most probably rework must go into their repair. It can also be the case that defects create scrapped work: something you are no longer able to salvage so you just throw it away (like a baker burning the bread: it’s no longer salvageable, so it ends up in the trash).
From an operational perspective, defects are often signaled by high error rates, frequent client revisions, and issues with quality control. Usually defects crawl into processes and teams that are not very capable of managing the quality aspect, either by not having proper procedures, a lack of resources for control, or just by not really being interested in providing quality output.
Overproduction
A bit strange to think doing more is waste, right? Well, it’s not! Think about this as if you are cooking something that is perfect to eat right there on the spot, and if left for another day, will no longer be as tasty. If you create more of said food, people will not eat it and you end up throwing it away. Overproduction is basically this: too much output done that no one asked for. It’s a type of waste because there was no real ask for it, it also pushed the team to deliver more than they should, and no real benefit comes from having it.
I was reading a post on Reddit a few days back and something very interesting caught my eye: a post about what people don’t like in their jobs. The comment with the most votes and replies was one about Excel trackers. This is a perfect example of overproduction: you are generating so many trackers for so many different people that it no longer becomes something useful, it’s just waste.
From an operational perspective, overproduction is often signaled by unread internal reports, features built without user demand, and task batching. It will usually be present in teams that don’t have a proper framework for output generation or have a faulty structure/process.
Waiting
This one is all about the time lost with… well, waiting for something to happen: dependencies, responses, system processing, etc. Waiting is one of the more common sources of waste in processes, much of it present in structures that are not very well equipped from a technological perspective, or very old and/or complicated legacy systems that create this huge “root system” with multiple ramifications and points of check and/or approval. From my experience, waiting time is one of the harder ones to eliminate, especially when it comes to multiple sources feeding into one giant structure.
From an operational perspective, waiting is signaled by long approval chains, delayed handoffs, and idle software loading times.
Non-Utilized Talent
This is for the new managers out there: meet your worst enemy in terms of waste. I say this because when you are at the beginning of your leadership role, at times (not always) it’s difficult to fully grasp what people you should be using on what task. You might have very gifted people in one area that you are not using at full capacity because… reasons. This creates waste because you can benefit from improved quality, faster results, or both by using the right person for a specific task. It’s crucial for any good leader to properly assess their team and make sure they understand (to the best of their abilities) what capabilities each person on the team has.
An operational perspective is harder in this case, as this type of waste is often signaled by rigid role boundaries, micromanagement, and ignoring front-line operational feedback.
As a side note on this one: non-utilized talent can have severe effects on the overall health of your team. Ignoring personal capabilities and using the wrong person for the wrong job will create frustration, will significantly decrease the quality of work, will increase the risk of attrition, and will decrease the level of trust people have in their leader: if I can’t trust you to assign me to the proper tasks for me, how can I trust you with other things?
Transportation
Also pretty common in the corporate environment, surprisingly, if you think about the name. Transportation is all about unnecessary movement of materials, files, and/or information. Each time you think about a file that must go to 5 different people for review and/or check before sending it off to the client, I want you to think about transportation. If only 1–2 people are actually needed for the check, the rest are completely unnecessary and are only adding more time to the overall cycle time of said request. While I understand why some processes and/or companies do this (to be vigilant, to avoid mistakes, to have better quality), it’s not actually the correct solution. Problems can be solved without having to increase cycle time if it is not needed. In other cases, we can see files just going to L2 (even L3) approval, but in reality, what are L2 and L3 really doing? If the scope is to just put an OK on them, honestly you are better off without it.
Operational signals are: routing documents through multiple manual review steps and complex data transfers.
Side note here as well: in some very specific and exceptional cases, this is embedded in the system because of the necessity for multiple redundant systems. If the process handles very sensitive and/or very important information, then it stands to reason to have it checked by multiple people.
Inventory
This one goes both ways: excess inventory or less than expected inventory. Think about a process that is either producing too much (and now you have excess stock), has too much Work-in-Progress, or a big backlog. It’s a very standard thing, at least from the processes I have observed over the years, to assume that it’s normal to have “a bit of backlog.” Please note that this is not the case. Backlog is by definition an output not produced in the desired time, or that will soon become as such. It will create spikes of work, frustration, and potential additional costs (overtime, for example); as such, we mark it as waste (things we can eliminate and that are not needed). The only backlog a process needs to have is: ZERO.
Operational signals are: backlogs, unread email queues, and high storage overhead.
Motion
Sounds a bit like transportation, but it is not. Motion is about the unnecessary movements made during task execution. A very simple example is this: to perform a task, you are clicking 40 times per task. You can complete the task with 20 clicks (at the same level of quality). Half of your clicks are motion waste, and when you add up the lost time from each task you are doing and all the tasks everyone else is doing like this, you get a big surprise in terms of waste.
Operational signals: excessive clicking between software apps, redundant tool navigation, and unorganized physical desks.
Extra-Processing
This one will sound strange, given all the push out there for improved quality and better customer experience; however, this type of waste is about doing more work, redundant checks, or higher quality than requested. Why do a higher quality than requested anyway? This will only hinder your overall workload, will increase customer (and even peer) frustration, and can potentially lead to additional sources of waste (Inventory, for example).
Operational signals are: over-engineered reports, entering the same data across multiple platforms, and increased cycle time due to higher quality.
Part III. How to Identify Waste
Now that you know what type of waste you can find, the question remains: how do I identify it?
There are multiple ways to do this; the best ones for first-time managers are usually one of the following:
- Gemba Walks – Step-by-step observations of work where it actually happens. This means you go to the person in question, stand next to them, and observe (just observe, don’t do anything else) what they are doing step-by-step.
- Value-Stream-Mapping (VSM) – This is a visual waste representation tool you can use to look at each process step, define if it’s a value-add or non-value-add, and then calculate the process efficiency. We will have a dedicated article on this topic later on in Optimize.
- 5 Whys and Root-Cause Analysis – The principle is similar to what we talked about in our Root Cause Analysis (RCA): How to Stop Repeat Process Failures article. It’s about using the 5 Whys until you have identified the waste’s systemic source.
Part IV. How to Eliminate Waste
While the topic of waste removal is not a few-rows type of story, for a first-time manager it will be enough (for now at least). The thing you must be aware of is this: eliminating waste is a constant battle. It’s not something you do one time and poof – all waste is gone for good. Waste can return, and very fast actually. This is why it’s important to keep the continuous improvement aspect… well, continuous. We never stop improving.
Here are some easy ways to get you on your way to eliminating waste:
- Prioritization Matrix: Categorizing wastes by impact vs. effort to find quick wins. This one is simple: you find the waste, have a brainstorming session with your team, try to assess the effort needed to eliminate it, and put a plan in motion: what, with whom, and how will you tackle it.
- Empowering Front-Line Teams: Building a continuous improvement (Kaizen) culture where employees actively flag friction. This one is all about small fixes you keep doing in order to keep your processes improving without having to make major changes. More details are available in this article: The Kaizen Mindset: Small Daily Improvements.
- Standardization: Documenting improved processes to prevent waste from creeping back in. If something works on one process, document it and implement it on another. The best approach, and the scientific one as well, is to have all improvements done properly documented; this way, you know what to do if something is broken. For this, we will also have another dedicated article in the future.
Final Thoughts
While this was a much bigger piece of content, waste is not as simple as a 15-minute read. It is sufficient for a first-time manager to get familiar with the situation and to be made aware, and with enough exposure and practice, this can serve as your SOP in case you need to review it.
Remember DOWNTIME—have a hard copy of it or write it someplace you always look, and use it every time you think something might be happening. It’s not about how much of the methodology you know by heart; it’s about how well you can research and access the right information at the right time.
If you need a bit of an exposure exercise, you can try this: conduct a 30-minute DOWNTIME audit on one key process this week and see what you find.
Until next time, stay happy, healthy, and safe! Help others as much and as often as you can!