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180 • Green Project Management

waiting to be processed in some way. Waiting can be caused by bad
material flow, or production runs that are too long, or long distances
between operations. A cure to this is to link the processes together (à
la Goldratt) so that one process feeds directly into another.
3. Transporting: Moving product between processes incurs cost and
adds no value to the operation. Excessive movement and handling
may cause damage or decay in quality. This can be difficult to reduce,
but mapping product or operations flows can make this easier to
visualize.
4. Inappropriate Processing: In some cases, systems use expensive or
unnecessarily high-precision equipment where simpler equipment or
operations would be sufficient. In some cases, investing in smaller, more
flexible equipment or operations, or creating manufacturing cells and
combining steps can reduce the waste of inappropriate processing.
5. Unnecessary Inventory: Excess inventory—which makes us feel
safe—tends to hide problems with a system. These problems should
be identified and resolved in order to improve operating perfor-
mance. Work in process (WIP), as stated previously, is a direct result
of overproduction and waiting. This WIP takes up floor space and
can interfere with good communications by “numbing” the real
problems of the system.
6. Unnecessary or Excess Motion: The classic industrial engineers
will be familiar with this form of muda. This waste is related to the
human-machine interface and is seen in bending, lifting, stretching,
reaching, and walking. Activities with excessive motion should be
analyzed and redesigned for improvement—and this should be done
with the system personnel for ideal effectiveness and buy-in.
7. Defects: Having a direct impact on the bottom line, defects have a
high cost to organizations. We know this as project managers when
we study the cost of quality. These costs come from rework or scrap,
lost customers, and even lawsuits. There is, of course, opportunity to
reduce defects at many facilities through involvement of employees,
and continuous process improvement (kaizen).

a new Waste?

One further Muda has been added in some treatments of this subject.
For example, current Lean thinking is that underutilization of employ-
ees is the eighth waste. This waste refers to not capitalizing on employees’