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Efficiency is key, and many businesses have learned that anything in excess is just waste.  Thus, if you’ve heard of Toyota’s original Kanban system, you know all about how effective Toyota is in eliminating it’s wastes.

According to Jeffery Liker, author of Toyota Way “Toyota has identified 7 primary types of non value-adding waste in its business: over-production, motion (of operator or machine), waiting (of operator or machine), conveyance, processing itself, inventory (raw material), and correction (rework and scrap). Liker included an 8th waste—untapped employee creativity. ”

Consider production to be producing more than you need, Walmart has done great with having exactly the right amount of inventory, anymore would be a business waste.  If you yourself sell a product you don’t want extra inventory hanging around do you?

Other wastes that are typical include having too much labor, these people end up sitting around, wastes your money, which in turn adds unneeded costs onto your product.

Finally having processes that are inefficient, having to correct your work, or even having lots of access product left over. Say for instance you create wooden shoes, but after creating the shoe you have tons of left over scrap wood that can’t be used left over.  That is lots of wasted shoe material, yet another waste.

How do they 7 wastes of Toyota apply to you?

Think about your daily life.  Do you use more water than necessary, drive an inefficent route to work?  Maybe you pay for an expensive landline phone where as a voip phone would be much cheaper and efficient for you?  There are plenty of ways to improve the efficency of our own lives and looking at the 7 wastes of a Toyota is a good place to start.