Ohno Not More Muda

Yes, moreda.

The seven Muda are in fact nine. Seven of nine are the original Muda and the remaining two would be a Muda not to includa:

1. Defects - produce something of bad quality and nobody will want it - or they won't be prepared to pay full price for it
2. Overproduction - make something that nobody asked for and nobody will pay for it
3. Transportation - mess about moving stuff from here to there more than you need to and there's increased risk to the thing and increased cost
4. Waiting - pay people to sit about doing sod all and you'll regret it. This especially counts when you have a bottleneck in management.
5. Inventory - make something incomplete that you can't sell yet and it's sitting gathering dust when you should either have finished it off, or made something you could sell sooner
6. Motion - moving people around, confusing people with change, all reduce output
7. Overprocessing - give a man a boy's task and you're losing the difference between a man's and a boy's wage
8. Skill - don't take advantage of a skill that someone has and you're wasting the potential and perhaps allowing that skill to go to seed
9. Pissing about with the process - refinement to process aside, if you're process oriented, rather than people and results oriented, then your effort is going into the one thing that cannot, alone, make you any money!

With the additional 9th Muda, we have a mudavellous list of things that will hold you back. Let's compare some things to the list:

• Changing management structure - that's movement
• Bringing in a consultant to tell you the obvious - that's overprocessing
• Changing process frequently - that's pissing about with the process
• Working on several versions of the same thing simultaneously - perhaps that's overproduction and inventory rolled into a big muda-ball
• Moving people between projects just before they're finished, leaving nobody available to finish them - that's movement and inventory
• Working on products without market research to determine whether there's money - that's overproduction.
• Releasing products too late to compete - that's overproduction.
• Releasing product without full knowledge of what's required and missing the mark - that's defects and overproduction and inventory.
• Taking your experienced staff and using them for simple tasks - that's overprocessing.
• Taking your experienced and skilled staff and changing their roles - that's a skills issue - some of their better skills may go to waste.

Pray you're not in a company like this. Every one of these mistakes is textbook and needs to be changed.