The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership

In partnership with George Trachilis from the Lean Leadership Institute (LLI), I’m making available material from LLI’s “The Toyota Way to Lean Leadership” course. Check back every week for a new chapter from the course.

Week 17: A3 Examples: Standards, Standard Work, and Visual Management
Week 16: More A3 Stories
Week 15: A3 Stories
Week 14: A3 Thinking
Week 13: Why PDCA?
Week 12: Problem Solving to Develop People
Week 11: Root Cause Using 5 Whys
Week 10: Toyota Business Practices – An Example
Week 9: Toyota Business Practices Explained
Week 8: Problem Solving Towards Ideal Part I and Problem Solving Towards Ideal Part II
Week 7: What is Lean? Problem Solving, Improvement, and A3 Thinking
Week 6: Developing People
Week 5: Lean Thinking—Philosophy for the Long-term
Week 4: True North Values
Week 3: Toyota Production System Origins
Week 2: Problem Solving: The Toyota Way
Week 1: Great Company Characteristics

 

Six levels of waste

In a WhatsApp conversation, Charles Protzman, co-author of, “The Lean Practitioner’s Field Book” shared how he categorizes wastes. His words:

We have categorized waste into six different levels:

1. The first level is obvious waste: low-hanging fruit (or walking on it).
2. 5S wastes: the easiest wastes to see.
3. The seven (eight) lean wastes.
4. Boiled frog waste: the waste that is hard to notice because it is old and we pass by it every day.
5. Tribal waste or sacred cows: untouchable waste in our culture and systems.
6. Hidden unseen waste: waste we don’t typically see, as it is hidden behind or masked by other wastes; you really have to hunt for it! The hardest waste to find and yet the most dangerous.

To #3, I would add and emphasize the knowledge work wastes of scatter (lack of focus), hand-off, wishful thinking, reinvention, and lack of system discipline to make the list more relevant to software development.

This is a really good list. What do you think?