Prime Ministerial candidates in unanimous agreement!

Have you been watching or listening to the Prime Ministerial debates? I got to listen to all of last week’s in the car on the way back home from a client event and heard the last 30 minutes last night also in the car on the way back from a networking event. I’m so glad that in whichever way you lean politically we have three candidates who finally agree on something!

So right now you’re possibly wondering what on earth I’m on about and I can almost hear you shouting back at me “were you really listening?”, “what planet are you on?”, “are you sure you were tuned into the right channel?”. And yes I absolutely was!

There is one theme that has been talked about in both debates and I’d like to claim that I was advising them all in advance… but I wasn’t. So just where did Messrs Brown, Cameron and Clegg get their coaching in Kaizen principles? Did you hear them; they all say that removing waste is a top priority in managing the country’s finances.

So to enlighten you further (because they weren’t going to give you their extended wisdom on the topic) here are Taiichi Ohno’s seven classifications of “muda” (translated as “waste”) that can be found all over our business processes, administration systems, health care provision and any other activity in the public or private sector:

Waste of Transportation (of data and things)

Waste of Inventory (poorly managed stock)

Waste of Movement (people)

Waste of Waiting (delays and backlogs)

Waste of Overproduction (making too much)

Waste of Overprocessing (unnecessary handling)

Waste of Defects (not doing things right first time)

“TIMWOOD” is a useful acronym to remember the 7 classifications.

When you analyse whatever work or activity you are performing and apply these labels, you will be able to identify improvement opportunities without any complex analysis or complicated methodologies and most likely at minimum cost.

Too simple for our complicated and overstretched public services and leading politicians? Let’s hope not. And let’s hope that whichever new Government we have on May 6th they will apply these simple principles in transforming our country in a unified way to the benefit of all.

And remember, you can apply them too, even now.

Posted Friday, April 23rd, 2010 in Changing, Continuous Improvement, Customer Service, Leading, Lean. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.