2.5 Tools: TIMWOOD

As discussed above, the elimination of waste is a critical tenet of the lean philosophy. Waste is defined through the eyes of the customer; if a customer is not willing to pay for an activity or its output, then it is considered wasteful. Waste comes in many different forms, which can be remembered using the mnemonic TIMWOOD—listing the seven most common forms of waste. These wastes, their descriptions, and examples are summarized in Table 2.1.

Table 2.1

TIMWOOD—Forms of Waste

Waste	Description	Examples
Transportation	Non-value-added movements of material or information.	Moving pallets of goods to different locations for staging prior to processing. Moving goods without a value-adding purpose, i.e., just to get them out of the way.
Inventory	Materials that exist in the system for any other purpose than processing for customer demand.	Carrying excess safety stocks of materials to buffer against unreliable people, equipment, or processes. Bulk ordering of materials to receive quantity discounts.
Motion	Non-value-added movements of people.	Poor ergonometric work design—excessive walking or movements of an individual within her workstation. Poor warehouse order picking designs—worker has to backtrack or cover inefficiently large footprints.
Waiting	Time spent idling or in queue when resources are not available for use.	Workers or machines idling because materials are not available to work on. Materials staged at warehousing docks waiting to be loaded/unloaded.
Over-production	Making more units of production than customer demand dictates.	Utilizing a “push” system of production as opposed to a “pull” system. Batch processing goods to prioritize utilization goals.
Over-processing	Engaging in processing activities that the customer is not willing to pay for (i.e., non-value added).	Upgraded product features or aesthetics that are not based on customer needs. Excessive rework due to faulty processes/lack of quality standards.
Defects	Products that do not meet specifications.	Customer orders that are delivered incomplete, wrong, or not on time. Process yield issues leading to excessive scrap and/or damaged products.

The key to lean operations is learning how to avoid these forms of waste. There are many techniques that lean organizations apply to accomplish this. Many of them are discussed elsewhere in this text.

For example, companies will use various forms of process mapping and value stream mapping in order to understand the full range of activities taking place in a process, then delve into an analysis as to whether those activities are adding value or not. Where improvement opportunities are identified, employees that are directly involved in the process engage in kaizen events, designed to improve the process and root out waste. Structured process improvement approaches include Plan, Do, Check, Act cycles and the DMAIC (Define, Measure, Analyze, Improve, and Control) process introduced in Topic 1 and explained in detail in future chapters of this text.

Waste minimization is an ongoing activity at any lean organization. There is always space to continuously improve operations. Moreover, customer needs change over time, and so it is critical for any organization to continuously adapt its value proposition to reflect these evolving customer needs and identify corresponding potentials for waste in the system.

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