Understanding Timwoods – 8 Wastes of Lean Management

Lean management is a production methodology that aims to identify and eliminate waste in the production or service process. The identification of the 8 wastes is one of the main principles of lean management to increase productivity and effectiveness.

It is important to understand the 8 wastes of lean management if managers want to enhance output as well as effectiveness. This waste can bring about negative impacts on the organization’s production or service operations, which are non-value-added activities. Businesses may cut costs, optimize, boost quality, and improve customer happiness by identifying and eliminating the 8 wastes of lean management.

What is “TIMWOODS”?

Therefore, this has led to the 8 wastes being referred to as “TIMWOODS” in general. It is an acronym for Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Waiting, Overproduction, Over Processing, Defects, and Skills.

1. Transportation

Transportation waste involves the unnecessary movement of people, tools, stocks, equipment, or goods. Defects and product damage can result from excessive material movement. Furthermore, transporting people and equipment around a lot can lead to extra workload, higher wear and tear, and exhaustion.

2. Inventory

Inventory is a form of waste of lean management because of the related holding costs. In accounting, Inventory is an asset and suppliers typically provide reductions for large orders. Nevertheless, maintaining more inventory than necessary to support a regular flow of work can result in issues such as product flaws or damaged materials, longer production lead times, an inefficient use of capital, and hidden difficulties .

3. Motion

Any needless motion of people, objects, and machines are wastes in motion. This includes walking, lifting, reaching, bending, stretching, and moving. The reorganization of motion-intensive tasks will improve worker productivity and raise health and safety standards.

4. Waiting

The waste of waiting includes individuals who are waiting for goods or equipment and idle industrial equipment. Unbalance in the manufacturing stations is a major source of waiting times, which can result in extra inventory and overproduction.

At the office, all examples of waiting waste include inefficient meetings, waiting for the computer to load software, waiting for other people to reply to emails, and waiting for papers. Waiting waste at a manufacturing plant might involve waiting for supplies to arrive, for the right instructions to begin production, and for poorly performing equipment.

5. Overproduction

Overproduction occurs when producing more than needed or producing too soon can lead to excess inventory, increasing handling and storage costs. This has a variety of negative effects. In the manufacturing flow, it creates a “caterpillar” tendency and increases the amount of work in progress (WIP). This results in staging, which raises the number of labor required to move the WIP. Also, it can hide problems that could have been found sooner and fixed with less scrap if processes were balanced to allow for earlier discovery. This is because earlier use of the WIP components would have shown the issues.

6. Over-processing

Over-processing refers to doing more work, adding more components, or having more steps in a product or service than what is required by the customer. This can happen in the manufacturing process by using more precise equipment than necessary, using parts with more capacity than necessary, performing more data analysis than necessary, more than one solution, adapting a part after it has been installed, and incorporating more functionality in a product than is necessary.

Process mapping is a lean method for reducing waste that aids in defining an ideal workflow that can get rid of overprocessing. Process mapping, a crucial technique in lean manufacturing, is not just for carrying out production activities. Reporting, signoff, and document control are also included.

7. Defects

Defects occur when a product is unsuitable for service. This usually leads to the product being either reworked or canceled. Both results are unproductive since they increase operating costs without providing any benefit to the customer.

8. Skills/ Unused talent

Unused talent waste occurs when organizations separate the role of management from employees. It might waste costs by giving workers the incorrect tasks to do or duties for which they were never adequately educated. It could also be the outcome of inadequate communication management.

How to eliminate TIMWOODS using lean management

Lean management’s primary objective is to eliminate TIMWOODS while also reducing waste and boosting productivity in corporate operations. Here are some ideas for getting rid of each of the TIMWOODS waste types:

1. Transportation

Mapping the current transportation process and identifying areas that might be reduced wastes in transportation, such as shipping consolidation or route optimization.

Automate transportation procedures with technology, for as by optimizing delivery routes using GPS monitoring or scheduling deliveries in response to current demand.

2. Inventory

• Some countermeasures for inventory include purchasing raw materials only when needed, establishing a queue system to avoid overproduction.

• Besides, using some suitable systems can help Businesses to handle things timely. For example, To cut back on waste and extra inventory, implement just-in-time (JIT) inventory systems and to remind customers when stock needs to be refilled, use a kanban system.

• Use technology to automate inventory management procedures and track inventory levels.

3. Motion

• Analyze company job processes to find any repetitive or superfluous motion and get rid of it.

• Rearranging the workstation improves workflow and reduces pointless movement. Automate manual procedures with technology to reduce motion.

4. Waiting

• Create ways to get rid of bottlenecks and delays by analyzing work processes.

• Use technology to speed up procedures and cut down on wait times.

• Reduce customer wait times by using a pull-based manufacturing system that only produces products if there is a demand for them.

5. Overproduction

• To counter overproduction, lean manufacturing processes apply a variety of methods. Using“Takt time” balances the production rates between various departments or cells. Measuring jobs and process-mapping take less time to set up, providing an effective small batch flow.

• “Pull” methods like Kanban may be used to minimize or completely get rid of WIP in many different industries.

6. Over-processing

• Process mapping is a lean method for reducing waste that aids in defining an ideal workflow that can get rid of overprocessing. Process mapping, a crucial technique in lean manufacturing, is not just for carrying out production activities. Reporting, signoff, and document control are also included.

• Analyze work processes to find those that are unnecessary or meaningless and get rid of them. Simplify procedures and processes to reduce overprocessing. In addition, other suggested solutions are eliminating needless manual steps and using technology to automate processes

7. Defects

Reducing faults involves many steps. Poka-Yoke, often known as error proofing, is a well-liked method for producing devices. This method aims for zero faults by including error detection and prevention into the production processes.

8. Skills/ Unused talent

Enhancing the efficiency of workers by including workers and incorporating their offers, giving them training and advancement opportunities, and engaging them in the development of process changes, taking into account the reality they find and the talent they have.Eliminating this kind of waste can make all others better.

In conclusion, Eliminating the 8 wastes of lean management is a continued effort that involves dedication and concentration. Until now doing so can have major, long-lasting advantages. Businesses can establish a lean and efficient manufacturing process, lowering costs and raising the quality of the company’s products or services, by applying lean methodologies and reducing company operations.