The ninth type of waste - inefficient energy consumption

Taiichi Ohno's seven classic types of waste are well known in lean management. They include defects, overproduction, waiting time, transportation, inventory, motion, and overprocessing. Meanwhile, muda (Japanese for waste) has been expanded to include unused talent as another type of waste.

Being lean means eliminating waste based on the eight mudas and adding value. Because we believe there is always a better way, we are taking this one step further by introducing another type of waste - inefficient energy consumption.

Energy is one of the most important sources for manufacturing products and a major contributor to climate change. Until now, resource consumption in production has been neither transparent nor linked to customer value. To avoid inefficient resource consumption, it is necessary to understand what customer value is created by the energy consumption and where relevant savings potentials are located.

We define inefficient energy consumption as waste caused by insufficient use of energy for non-value-added activities. With Polaris VSM - our digital value stream mapping tool - the resource consumption of individual production processes can be shown transparently and up-to-date. This provides a better understanding of where exactly in production energy is being wasted and where limited value is being added.

With the goal of maximizing customer value while minimizing energy consumption, Energy Performance Indicators (EnPIs) are used to calculate and visualize energy consumption in digital value stream mapping.

Sound interesting? Then feel free to send us a message or give us a call. We look forward to hearing from you.