From IBT PrimeMOVER

CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT
Crush the Deadly DOT WIMP
By Anthony Akin: Manager, Lean Six Sigma
Aug 6, 2007 - 12:07:47 PM

IBT Lean Six Sigma
Henry Ford, a pretty good source for management principles, had a great saying: "The largest and most difficult waste to find is time. One can never get it back." That is still as true over 100 years after the founding of Ford Motor Company.

It is also true regarding the threat of waste. It raises costs. Waste produces no corresponding benefit. Most important, it threatens the livelihood of all the workers in the system.

So, the basic question about waste is a simple one. Why does it persist? An answer to think about is equally simple: We deserve what we tolerate.

Maybe it's not as difficult to eliminate waste in a business process as we think. The key way to do it, according to a training session recently attended by IBT officials, is as simple as eliminating all DOT WIMP.

D.O.T W.I.M.P. (Defects, Overproduction, Transportation, Waiting, Inventory, Motion, Processing)

DOT WIMP is a mnemonic for the "Seven Wastes" as identified in classic Lean Principles/Continuous Improvement orthodoxy.

DOT WIMPs can be found everywhere in any organization. Two typical situations include engineering/design and administrative functions.

Problem

Engineering/Design

Administration

Defects

miscommunication; drawing errors

data entry errors

Overproduction

designing but not making; no standardization

preparing reports not acted on; unneeded copies

Transportation

data hand-offs

extra steps; extra distances

Waiting

on other functional groups

processing other than as the work comes

Inventory

design data which is not competed or not fully used

transactions not processed

Motion

unnecessary analysis and testing

extra steps; extra data entry

Processing
(too much)

scope creep; poorly run team meetings; work done without request

sign-offs

Waste can be eliminated, but only under certain circumstances. It requires an organizational will.

The organization must have the ability to recognize and identify waste; the courage to call it waste; the desire to eliminate it; and the follow-through to actually do it.

Taiichi Ohno, a patron saint of Continuous Improvement, taught that the road to true problem solving lies in identifying root causes, beyond the source.

His signature method was to keep asking Why? at least five times. The technique is based on asking Why? and then asking Why? again and again, going upstream into the process.

At the end of the five Why? process, the great likelihood is that you will have pursued the deeper and systematic cause of the problem. This leads to taking deeper countermeasures that actually solve the root of the problem, rather than just reacting to a visible sign of something being amiss.

Continuous Improvement is but one of the Lean Manufacturing approaches being studied and applied by IBT. If you would like more information, contact us.



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