The Waste Walk

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Roboyo

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Ghost Walking? Nah… Waste Walking

In nearly every town you will find a Ghost walk, where they offer an eerie night of history and mystery to capture the imagination and inspire the mind.

They always recount that their walk is the genuine walk, the authentic walk, the magical walk, however, if you really want a walk where you will find something interesting, try the Waste Walk.

The Waste Walk is nothing more than gathering a team together and taking that team on a Process Walk to identify and eliminate the 8 wastes of Lean.

Lean methodology involves the identification and elimination of waste and to help focus efforts in this area, Lean practitioners developed a list of 8 key points which establish the most likely areas where waste will occur. See our 8 Wastes of Lean Infographic to find out more.

So how do you walk the Waste Walk?

• Engage your team and educate them on what the 8 wastes are.
• Once educated and aligned, a process, or indeed an area, needs to be selected to walk.
• When choosing the process or area, you don’t have to look for the worst, just think of one that has an opportunity to improve.
• Once selected, take the team, and walk through the area, looking for as many examples of Waste as you can.
• When you identify the wastes, complete a Waste Action Plan (above) for removal.
• Do not filter your wastes according to what you can fix, just use the 8 wastes to describe and identify the problems or opportunities.
• Make sure the Waste Opportunity is described according to the specific example, don’t just give it a Waste Label.
• Take the examples and put them into priority order using the Effort / Benefit matrix.
• Once you have prioritized, start eliminating!

But don’t forget to actually walk the process. For real!

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