Reducing Waste with Lean Six Sigma

Reducing Waste with Lean Six Sigma

Lean Six Sigma is a trademarked approach to process improvement in manufacturing from a data driven perspective. The goal of this process improvement is less chaos in the flow of operational tasks, decreased cost, improved product quality, and improved customer satisfaction.

One of the main concepts to accomplish a higher level of process efficiency is by reducing “Waste” in the process and Lean Six Sigma defines 8 different types of waste with the acronym “DOWNTIME”.

• Defects: A defect is a product that is declared unfit for use, which requires the product to be either scrapped or reworked, costing the company time and money. Examples include a product that is scratched during the production process and incorrect assembly of a product due to unclear instructions.

• Over-production: Over-production refers to products made in excess or before it is needed. Examples include creating unnecessary reports and overproduction of a product before a customer has requested it.
• Waiting: Waiting involves delays in process steps and is split into two different categories: waiting for material and equipment and idle equipment. Examples include waiting for authorization from a superior, waiting for an email response, waiting for material delivery, and slow or faulty equipment.
• Non-Used Talent: Non-Used Talent refers to the waste of human potential and skill. The main cause is when management is segregated from employees; when this occurs, employees are not given the opportunity to provide feedback and recommendations to managers to improve the process flow and production suffers. Examples include poorly trained employees, lack of incentives for employees, and placing employees in jobs or positions that do not utilize their knowledge or skill.
• Transportation: Transportation is the unnecessary or excessive movement of materials, products, people, equipment, and tools. Transportation adds no value to the product and can lead to product damage and defects. Examples include moving products between different functional areas and sending overstocked inventory back to an outlet warehouse.
• Inventory: Inventory refers to an excess in products and materials that are unprocessed. It is a problem because the product may become obsolete before the customer requires it, storing the inventory costs the company time and money, and the possibility of damage and defects increases over time. Examples include excess finished goods, finished goods that cannot be sold, and broken machines on the manufacturing floor.
• Motion: Motion is unnecessary movement by people. Excessive motion wastes time and increases the chance of injury. Examples include walking to get tools, reaching for materials, and walking to different parts of the manufacturing floor to complete different tasks.
• Extra-processing: Extra-processing is doing more work than required or necessary to complete a task. Examples include double-entering data, unnecessary steps in production, unnecessary product customization, and using higher precision equipment than necessary.

There are areas in Epicor which store or can store the information needed to set a baseline for current “Waste” level and monitor how process improvements impact the “Waste” level over time. In my 10 years of Experience with Epicor and 9 years of manufacturing data analytics, I have found how “Waste” baseline data levels can be hard to determine and “Waste” reduction monitoring through data is often a barrier for Analysts. I have seen many consultants working on Lean Initiatives have to manually observe and record data to achieve these data driven goals or pull in numbers from various clunky Epicor reports without a drop to excel in table format option needed for higher level analysis. This data collection process can form its own “Waste” in terms of unnecessary effort and time as so much “Waste” data can be found and pulled directly from Epicor.

For those with BAQ experience let me tell you which tables and fields within Epicor will be your best friends to aid you in your “Waste” reduction goal setting and monitoring. These BAQs can be pulled into BAQ reports, Excel workbooks or Dashboards and trended for all your Lean Six Sigma Metric needs.

Series on where to find the data in Epicor by “DOWNTIME” Waste type to come next….

For basic training on BAQ creation please contact check the CodaBears YouTube for BAQ Training Videos or contact CodaBears for Basic to Expert Level training. If you want a higher level of help gathering data please request a quote for customized data creation, data analytics, reporting and/or training for your specific Lean Six Sigma waste reduction goals.