What is Muda? A Concept Guaranteed To Make Your Work Easier

Have you been struggling at work because of inefficiencies, things taking too long, or just inexplicably complex? Chances are you have a lot of muda in the workplace! 

So what is “muda”? It’s a Japanese term that means waste, specifically waste that exists in work the workplace. The term was originated by the Toyota Production System, the founders of lean process thinking.

We are living in a world of processes that continue to get more complex. It’s more important than ever to streamline, simplify, and build efficiency in our work. Have you ever felt like you were part of a process that felt inefficient and you wanted to make it better, but had no idea where to start?

In this post, I will dive into the concept of muda and how you can reduce it to make processes in your workplace simpler and more efficient. The beauty of this concept is that it can be applied in virtually any industry, including tech, healthcare, manufacturing, government, and more!

Where to Start

To begin learning about muda, let’s first get familiar with a methodology I have been practicing since the beginning of my career called “lean”. Lean has multiple synonymous names such as continuous improvement, kaizen, process improvement, lean for manufacturing, performance improvement, and lean principles. 

The concept of lean originated in the manufacturing industry with Toyota and was designed to create a culture of continuous improvement in the workplace. Toyota got so skilled at using this methodology that their production lines could push out a car in less than a minute! Talk about an efficient process! It is a fascinating origin story I highly recommend you read more about here.

As stated before, you can use lean for manufacturing, healthcare, tech, government, and a variety of other industries. Additionally, there are many different lean principles that you can implement to improve a process that I will cover in future posts. But the foundational element of this methodology and the place I encourage you to start is: reducing muda (or waste) in a process.

Muda Defined

As mentioned above, muda is the Japanese term for waste. In the workplace, it is any task that is identified as non-value added to the work or for your customer. 

As a side note: lean and continuous improvement methodology is anchored in doing what your customer needs and wants. Your customer is your end-user, your boss, your team, another team, etc. It’s the people who will immediately benefit from the work you are doing.

If you think back to a process where you felt like you were either waiting for the next step, had to go back and rework something, took the time to search for materials or resources, or experienced the same task done in a variety of different ways, you have experienced muda in a process. Typically, negative emotions like frustration, anxiety, and being overwhelmed are huge indicators that there is waste in the process.

The first step is to be able to recognize the waste so we know how to spot the inefficiencies. Once you can identify waste, you can reduce it, or better yet, eliminate it to improve a process! In lean methodology, there are 8 distinct types of wastes that cause inefficiencies in a process. At first, these wastes can seem very similar, but I promise there is some nuance. Let’s look at the 8 types.

The 8 Types of Muda

1. Transportation
2. Inventory
3. Motion
4. Waiting
5. Over-processing
6. Over-production
7. Defects
8. Underutilized talent

In this next section, I’ll define each waste, give examples of how it may show up, and provide recommendations on how to reduce it.

Transportation

Transportation waste is the unnecessary movement of people, products, documents, emails, and more. Some examples of this are:

• Moving patients from one department of the hospital to another
• Having an approval process that needs to be sent to multiple people or teams for their sign off
• Having customers talk to multiple teams to get their inquiry resolved (Have you ever called an airline for an issue and had to talk to multiple customer service agents and teams? How frustrating!)
• Walking back and forth to a printer multiple times a day – just move it closer!

To reduce this waste, reduce the number of people and places needed to complete a process. For example, reduce the number of people it takes in an approval process or try having a customer talk to only one team rather than multiple. Generally, try to only involve the people or teams that are critical to a process to reduce transportation waste.

Inventory

Inventory muda is when there is an accumulation of material, products, or even a backlog of projects. In a manufacturing environment, this is an expensive waste because inventory is treated like cash. In a non-manufacturing industry, like health care or an office space, this creates unnecessary spending on supplies. Additionally, it causes delays in a process because it’s difficult to find and sort through the materials you need to do your job. There are many ways to identify this waste:

• A buildup of office supplies that are overflowing
• In a production environment, extra material on the floor or over-stacking on shelves
• Stacks of pre-printed forms taking up valuable storage or desk space
• For teams where most of their work is electronic-based, this can include a backlog of projects to complete, which can delay completion

To reduce this waste, create a system to organize your inventory for ease of use. This includes labeling items, creating a designated space for material, and developing a replenishment system that orders just the right amount of material to do the job. For project-based teams, this means keeping the backlog of projects to a reasonable level for the team so that they can deliver them to their customers on time.

Motion

Have you ever felt that a process had way too many steps and could be simplified? If you have, you’ve likely experienced this category of waste. The waste of motion and transportation are similar, but motion waste involves unnecessary and extra movement within the workplace. Here are some examples of motion waste:

• It takes 10 clicks to navigate to the file folder you often need to pull up
• You spend a long time searching for tools or supplies to do your job
• You have to pull up 5 different reference documents or instructions to complete a process

To reduce the waste of motion, take a step back and try to mindfully realize where you are spending unnecessary time doing to your work. Think about ways to consolidate multiple reference documents, reduce the number of unnecessary steps to complete a process, or organize supplies to cut down the time it takes to find them.

Waiting

I’m sure the majority of you reading this post have experienced the frustration that comes with the waste of waiting. This muda happens when there are time-consuming delays in a process that cause it to be unnecessarily long.  Here are some examples that illustrate the waste of waiting:

• Waiting for a manager or leader to reply to an email
• Waiting for a group decision to be made
• A delay in materials or tools getting to where they are needed most – i.e. a patient room is not stocked with materials, causing a healthcare provider to find them, delaying the patient’s appointment

Many different variables can contribute to the waste of waiting. In an office setting, I highly recommend setting deadlines for team members that need to provide their approval or decision rather than leaving it open-ended. In a workplace setting where different materials are needed, ensure they are all ordered ahead of time or on a preset delivery schedule, and ready for use in the location where they are used.

Over-Processing

This muda is typically experienced when there are more steps in a process than necessary. It will often have you asking yourself, “Is this a necessary step for me to complete this task?” Some examples of overprocessing waste can look like this:

• Creating more reports than needed
• Over-analyzing data and getting into analysis paralysis
• Involving many different teams in the decision-making as opposed to the core teams
• Over-engineering a product or solution
• Adding more features in a product or service than what your customer wants

To help reduce this waste, I highly recommend mapping out the process. This will help to identify where some inefficiencies in the process may be and if there are unneeded extra steps. Another strategy is to keep putting yourself in the shoes of your customer and ask yourself if they would find a particular step valuable or not.

One approach I found helpful is bucketing steps into three categories: “need to have”, “nice to have”, and “maybe not needed.” Keep the “need to have” steps, consider removing the “nice to have” steps, and try performing the process without the “maybe not needed” steps to see if you need them or not.

Over-Production

The waste of over-production occurs when a process has created more than what is needed for your customers or team members. It can be tempting to produce as much as you can to feel as productive as possible. Lets review some examples of over-production waste:

• Creating dashboards or reports that no one reads
• Making more products or features that your customer does not need or want
• Printing more copies than needed, which wastes resources
• Working outside of the scope of your project
• Overbuying groceries at Costco and having to throw them away because you couldn’t eat them before the expiration date. (I have a personal mission to get better at this!)

To reduce the waste of over-production, try to have a clear idea of exactly what you, your customer, or team members need. If you don’t have an idea of what they need, don’t be shy to ask to get clarification. Often, they will appreciate that you have their needs and wants at the forefront. 

Defects

Defects occur when the final product, task, or project has errors embedded within it. This typically causes a lot of rework or scrapping of the product altogether. Can you think of a time when you were nearly done with your work only to find it had errors that needed to be corrected? How frustrating did that feel and how much time did it take you to correct those errors? See some examples below of defects that are commonly encountered:

• A final version report ready to submit that has spelling or grammatical errors, or inaccurate information
• A data entry task where the data was entered incorrectly
• A damaged product that reached the customer who now must return it
• A part or tool that is not operating correctly when needed, causing a delay

To reduce or eliminate the waste of defects, it’s important to focus on how to prevent them in the first place. Essentially you want to make it hard for the wrong thing to happen. In traditional lean terminology, this is called a poka-yoke. An example of this is when you go to a grocery store to buy eggs, what’s the first thing you check for? Probably that there are a dozen eggs in the container, right? The egg carton makes it hard to not have the correct amount of eggs. Can you imagine how difficult it would be to know if you had a dozen eggs if they came in a bowl? Think about how you can add a metaphorical “egg carton” to your process.

Another tactic that can be used is creating standard work to ensure work is done consistently. Creating standard work means you have developed a tried-and-true process that will produce quality results every time.

Underutilized Talent

This waste is defined as not utilizing the creativity, ingenuity, and critical thinking of your biggest asset: your team and staff. When team members are directed to “do as their told,” they are not allowed to contribute their whole skillset to the work, a HUGE WASTE!! As mentioned in a previous post, millennials are seeking leadership to continuously utilize their talents and expertise. Examples of underutilized talent are:

• Only upper management making critical decisions on strategy, planning, and innovation work
• Not engaging and challenging your team in solving complex problems
• Having a multi-layered vertical hierarchy where it’s difficult for team members and staff to voice their ideas for improvement and innovation
• Not providing training and development opportunities to grow their skill set
• Not providing constructive feedback to your team members so that they can get better

To reduce this waste as much as possible, start engaging your team on issues and problems you are trying to solve. Use this guide, The Secret to Growing Your Team’s Skill For Problem Solving to help you get started. I recognize that it can feel awkward when first bringing your team members in to help you solve a problem, but they will appreciate the collaboration and the opportunity to leverage their skills.

Eliminate The Muda!

The ability to improve a process is a high-value and in-demand skill that employers are constantly in search of and can be applied to any job. It’s a true resume builder.

As you were going through the examples of each muda (or waste), you may have thought to yourself: “I have more than one of these wastes in my process.” It’s very common that numerous types of waste will be present in every process. All of them are important to reduce or eliminate, but I strongly encourage you to just start with one and see what results you get.

As with learning any new skill, gaining proficiency in identifying the different types of waste will get easier with practice. The fun part will be getting creative and trying new ways of doing things to improve a process. How will you get started on eliminating waste from a process?