Muda Mura and Muri | Lean Manufacturing Wastes Lean Manufacturing Wastes
When people think of waste in manufacturing they usually only think about all of the scrap material that gets thrown away or if your lucky recycled, they often forget about all of the other actions that waste our time, our resources and our MONEY..
When someone who has had some contact with Lean Manufacturing talks about waste they are often talking about Muda, or the seven wastes (or 8+ wastes depending on your definitions), but they often forget the other wastes defined within the Toyota Production System; Mura and Muri.

Muda, The Seven Wastes
Muda is any activity or process that does not add value, a physical waste of your time, resources and ultimately your money. These wastes were categorized by Taiichi Ohno within the Toyota production system, they are; * Transport; the movement of product between operations, and locations. * Inventory; the work in progress (WIP) and stocks of finished goods and raw materials that a company holds. * Motion; the physical movement of a person or machine whilst conducting an operation. * Waiting; the act of waiting for a machine to finish, for product to arrive, or any other cause. * Overproduction; Over producing product beyond what the customer has ordered. * Over-processing; conducting operations beyond those that customer requires. * Defects; product rejects and rework within your processes.
To this list of the original seven wastes most people also add the following; * Talent; failing to utilize the skills and knowledge of all of your employees * Resources; failing to turn off lights and un-used machines * By-Products; not making use of by-products of your process
Many “lean” initiatives fail to see past the elimination of Muda and believe that the point of Lean is to just eliminate waste. This