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Friday, April 30, 2010

Lean Quote of the Day, April 30, 2010

On Fridays I will post a Lean related Quote. Throughout our lifetimes many people touch our lives and leave us with words of wisdom. These can both be a source of new learning and also a point to pause and reflect upon lessons we have learned. Within Lean active learning is an important aspect on this journey because without learning we can not improve.

Feel free to share some of your favorites here as well.

"Continuous improvement is not about the things you do well - that's work. Continuous improvement is about removing the things that get in the way of your work. The headaches, the things that slow you down, that’s what continuous improvement is all about." ~ Bruce Hamilton


The things that get in the way of your work are those non-value added tasks or headaches.  These headaches can be characterized by eight wastes which make up the acronym DOWNTIME. 

Defects
Over-production
Waiting
Non-utilized Resources/Talent
Transportation
Inventory
Motion
Excess Processing

By focusing on reducing or eliminating the Eight Wastes associated with DOWNTIME we can make our work easier.  This gets us back to those things we do well.  That is the essence of continuous improvement.

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