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Lean Processes and DOWNTIME
While it hasnt always been practiced with any great rigor, the concept of waste reduction has long been a
part of American business tradition. Ben Franklin's common- sense reminders of "waste not, want not,"
and "a penny saved is a penny earned" have been well taken by such luminaries as Henry Ford, who
introduced the modern assembly line, and the founders of time-and-motion studies and scientific
management, Frank Gilbreth and Frederick Winslow Taylor. By the 1970s, Japanese industrial engineers
had integrated all these concepts and more into a framework that eventually came to be known as lean
manufacturing. Mostly derived from the Toyota Production System (TPS) and guided by industrial
engineers Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo, lean manufacturing is based on the idea of preserving (or
increasing) value with less work. In the parlance of lean manufacturing, anything that doesn't increase
value in the eye of the customer must be considered waste, and every effort should be made to eliminate
that waste.
It's easy to see how this mindset can be generalized to any systematic business process, and indeed it
has. In recent years, businesses of all types have begun to implement lean processes, often simply
referred to as "Lean." Eight forms of waste have been defined and targeted: seven from the original TPS
system, and one added by American experts as the concept became more obvious to and accepted by
mainstream business. Numerous acronyms for these Eight Wastes have been proposed as aids to
memory, but the one that seems to have caught on best is DOWNTIME. It's simple, straightforward, and
appropriate. Here's what each of the letters stands for:
Defects
Overproduction
Waiting
Non-utilized/underutilized talent
Transportation
Inventory
Motion
Excess Processing
Systematic elimination of these wastes can result in faster processes, lower costs, higher quality, happier
workers and, most importantly, happier customers. In this article, we'll take a look at each of the
DOWNTIME wastes in detail.
D is for Defects: mistakes that require additional time, resources, and money to fix. In a manufacturing
process, a defect might involve a defective part that has to be remade; in a white-collar job, it might
include erroneous paperwork that needs to be redone. Defects tend to be the result of:
Poor quality control
Poor repair
Poor documentation
Lack of standards
Weak or missing processes
A misunderstanding of customer needs
Poor inventory control
Poor design
Undocumented design changes
Completely eradicating any form of waste is impossible, but defects can certainly be limited by the
application of standardized work plans, more stringent quality control at all levels, a full understanding of
work requirements and customer needs, and simple job aids such as checklists.
The O in DOWNTIME stands for Overproduction. In some organizations, workers just blindly keep

producing, even when those who receive their output either aren't ready for it or don't need it. Basically,
what you end up with is too much stuff, too early, that the customer doesn't necessarily want. This is
especially common in manufacturing, but it can occur in any workplace situation in which there's a
bottleneck. Overproduction may occur due to:
Just-in-case production
Unclear customer needs
Producing to a forecast
Long set-up times
Attempts to avoid long set-up times
Poorly applied automation
The solution to overproduction is to establish a reasonable work flow for the benefit of the customer,
which in this case is whoever acts as the downstream consumer of what you produce: your client, another
organization within the company, the general public, or whatever the case may be. Be sure that there are
well-established procedures in place for every process in your organization, and if necessary, implement
new processes to keep work from backing up behind particular bottlenecks in the organization.
Speaking of bottlenecks, one of the worst in any organization is Waiting, the third letter in DOWNTIME.
This is actual downtime, which occurs whenever work has to stop for some reason: because the next
person in line is overwhelmed, because something broke down, because you're waiting for approval, or
because you've run out of something. Causes of waiting can also include:
Mismatched production rates
Very long set-up times
Poor shop layout
Insufficient staffing
Work absences
Poor communications
Whatever the cause, workers have to sit around twiddling their thumbs while waiting for the bottleneck to
be cleared. There are many ways to handle this, though some may run up against other waste reduction
efforts; one of the more obvious is the need to provide adequate staffing to handle the workload at the
bottlenecks, which some managers may target as a source of monetary waste. Otherwise, efforts to push
decision-making ability to lower levels, better quality control to ensure the reliability of necessary
machinery and systems, better supply control, and employee cross-training to prevent bottlenecking
during absences can all serve to limit this form of waste.
The concept of Non-utilized/underutilized talent, while not included in the original Japanese list of the
seven wastes, is an integral part of the American concept of DOWNTIME. Rather than being transparent
to the system, people themselves have been plugged into the equation, in the sense that poor utilization
of existing talents, ideas, abilities, and skill sets is a waste as real as using ten pounds of iron when five
will do. This type of waste can be caused by a myriad of things, not least:
Lack of teamwork
Lack of training
Poor communications
Management's refusal to include employees in problem-solving
Narrowly defined jobs and expectations
Poor management in general
If the above list sounds oddly familiar, it should: many of these failings are the same ones that result in a
lack of employee engagement, which can hamstring any organization's productivity. Failing to eliminate
these lapses will result in a lessened ability to tap into the human resources available to you, which
makes it difficult to effectively attack the other seven DOWNTIME wastes. You know the solution:
empower your employees, rectify any lacks in their training, and stop micromanaging. Basically, you have

to treat experienced people as process experts who know what they're doing, not as interchangeable
spare parts in your system. Don't just tell them what to do: ask them to think, too.
Our Fifth Deadly Waste is Transportation: waste caused by moving things around. This is less of a
problem in a business office than in a manufacturing plant, since most of what white collar workers
"transport" can be sent by email these days. Otherwise, too much transportation tends to increase costs,
wastes time, increases the likelihood of product damage and deterioration, and can result in poor
communication. In general, transportation waste can be caused by:
Poor plant/office layout
Excessive or unnecessary handling
Misaligned process flow
Poorly-designed systems
Unnecessary steps in system processes
Like most DOWNTIME wastes, transportation issues can be defeated by common-sense efforts such as
simplifying processes, repairing physical layouts, handling products less often, and making distances
between steps as short as possible. In an office situation, simply providing enough printers and other
equipment for everyone can limit transportation waste.
Next up is Inventory, another item more important in manufacturing that in the standard office
environment, but still something you must be aware of. The actual issue here is having too
much inventory. The industrial methodologies that spawned the concept of Lean are based on the
practice of Just-In-Time production, in which products are made only when they're needed, not based on
a forecast. A good example is a restaurant that cooks your food only when you order it, as opposed to one
that has a series of entrees ready to pop in a microwave. While the former takes a while, it produces only
when there's a demand, so waste is minimal and the product is fresher. The latter may get your food to
you more quickly, but it's not as freshand often, they have a lot of entrees left over at the end of the
day.
Otherwise, excess Inventory may be caused by:
Overproduction
Poor layout
Mismatched production speeds
Unreliable suppliers
Long set-up times
Misunderstood customer needs
Basically, eliminating excess inventory involves adjusting the workflow and adopting the J-I-T process,
which can be adapted to office environments as well as manufacturing. Remember, all you really need to
do is produce enough to satisfy your downstream customer.
Next up is excess Motion, because simply having to move around too much can slow you down
significantly. Here's a classic example: an industrial engineer once observed that bricklayers often worked
from piles of loose bricks placed at foot level, so that every time a worker reached for a brick, they had to
bend all the way down to the ground. Putting the bricks on a platform at waist level sped up the
bricklayers by as much as three times. Get the picture? The more you have to move around reaching for
that file or trotting back and forth between your desk and the printer, the more time gets wasted. Typical
causes of excessive motion include:
Poor workstation/shop layout
Poor housekeeping
Shared tools and machines
Workstation congestion
Isolated operations

 Lack of standards
Poor process design and controls
The solution here is to tighten things up: basically, to make sure everything can be easily located and put
into play whenever it's needed. Re-arrange the office or shop layout to decrease the distance between
stations, and make it easier to reach things that are often used. Make sure all tools and parts are close at
hand, and provide extra printers, copiers, and fax machines for your employees. Standardize all folders,
drawers, and cabinets, and make sure everything stays organized so that it doesn't take more than a few
seconds for anyone to find a file they need. Finally, make sure everything about the work area stays neat.
E, the final letter in DOWNTIME, is for Excess Processing. This is any unnecessary effort expended in
order to complete a task: double-handling, permission seeking, unnecessary steps, re-entering data,
making too many copies or reports, and the like. Excess Processing can arise from:
Poor process control
Lack of standards
Poor communication
Overdesigned equipment
Misunderstanding of the customer's needs
Human error
Producing to forecast
Whatever the cause, the result is predictable: wasted money, time, effort, and resources. Your only option
is to closely examine your processes and fix them: institute standard operating procedures, empower
employees, get your documentation up to par, implement J-I-T processes (if applicable), and do
everything you can to shrink processes without sacrificing quality. If you're working in an office, stop
copying everyone on emails and quit sending out so many reports...and see who screams. Eliminate as
many meetings as you can, and let people do their jobs without getting permission every step of the way.
In Conclusion
DOWNTIME, DOTWIMP, TIM WOODS, WORMPIT, TO WISDOMthere are various acronymous ways
to internalize and remember the seven or eight wastes associated with Lean, depending on how you
define and order them. We've chosen DOWNTIME not only because it's easy to remember, but also
because it makes more intuitive sense than the others. "Downtime"time wasted instead of adding value
to the final productis a common result of all eight of the wastes described here.
The point is to recognize these problems in your organization and to develop a thorough understanding of
them, so that you can take corrective actions to limit them. Being human, we'll never eliminate waste
completely; but an organization that can trim away most of the fat will be more agile and more capable of
competing in any marketplace. The ability to move at the rate of customer demand, by producing exactly
what's needed when it's needed, will allow for a saner workplace in which productivity and profitability can
rise to remarkable levels.
Make it a productive day! (TM)
(C) Copyright 2010 Laura Stack. All rights reserved.
2010 Laura Stack. Laura Stack is a personal productivity expert, author, and professional speaker
whose mission is to build high-performance productivity cultures in organizations by creating Maximum
Results in Minimum Time. She is the president of The Productivity Pro, Inc., a time management
training firm specializing in productivity improvement in high-stress organizations and the 2011-2012
President of the National Speakers Association. Since 1992, Laura has presented keynotes and seminars
on improving output, lowering stress, and saving time in todays workplaces. She is the bestselling author
of four books: SUPERCOMPETENT; The Exhaustion Cure; Find More Time; and Leave the Office
Earlier. Laura has been a spokesperson for Microsoft, 3M, Xerox, and Office Depot. She is the creator of

The Productivity Pro planner by Day-Timer and has been featured on the CBS Early Show, CNN, and
the New York Times. Her clients include Starbucks, Cisco Systems, Wal-Mart, and Bank of America. To
have Laura speak at your next event, call 303-471-7401 or visit www.TheProductivityPro.com to sign up
for her free monthly productivity newsletter.