“The most dangerous kind of waste is the waste we do not recognize.”

Shigeo Shingo

According to Taiichi Ohno, the father of lean and one of the forerunners of Lean Manufacturing and was part of the team that developed the Toyota Production System, one of the first steps to becoming lean is to eliminate waste in a process. In 1988, he defined seven types of Muda. An eighth Muda was added later on.

The Muda of defects is any work or activity that did not accomplish the desired result, contained incomplete/conflicting information, or did not meet client demands. It is work that you have completed but requires reworking. Anything that must be reworked, corrected, or clarified is considered a waste because it forces to use double the resources (time, money, availability) to complete the same task.

In the office, defects are often labeled as errors. Such errors would be missing order numbers in an excel sheet, typos in an advertising banner, a bug in your developer’s code, a missing attachment, a late report, etc… Such errors would require you to spend additional resources to correct, rectify and optimize the process.

Muda Defects in the office can take (but not limited to) any of the following forms :

• Incorrect information
• Conflicting information
• Insufficient information
• Partially complete work or information
• Missing attachment, file names, lost files, or information
• Late work
• Data entry errors
• Errors that run undetected
• Design flaws
• Manual keying generating errors
• Spreadsheet errors
• Invoice errors

As Shigeo Shingo said, the most dangerous waste is the one we don’t recognize. One or more examples presented above could occured at your organization. One of the volunteers from the platform could work on it to reach the operational excellence with a Lean philosophy.