Transportation Waste Definition: the unnecessary act of taking or carrying someone or something from one place to another Office example: Movement of paperwork; multiple hand-offs of e-data, unnecessary approvals, excessive email attachments, or cc-ing people who don't really need to know. CU Store example: transporting items from warehouse to store to warehouse and/or back to another CU store.

Definition: Excess or unnecessary inventory. Inventory Waste Definition: Excess or unnecessary inventory. Office example: Purchasing or making things before they are needed: office supplies, items in an in-box, unread email, and all forms of batch processing. ODFS example: inventory in multiple locations causes confusion about what we have, and so we often order unnecessary items.

Motion Waste Definition: Extra or unnecessary physical motion to perform a task or process. Office example: Walking to a copier, printer, or other machine; walking between offices; using central filing; or adding attachments to an email or cc-ing people who don't really need to know.

People Waste Definition: Not fully engaging (or misplacing) the talent of a team member Office example: A person has knowledge of a software program, but others don’t know about or tap into that knowledge.

Definition: Any unnecessary waits or delays in a process. Waiting (delay) Waste Definition: Any unnecessary waits or delays in a process. Office example: Slow computers, downtime (computer, fax, phone), waiting for approvals, waiting for customer information, or waiting for clarification on (or correction of) work from earlier in the process.

Over-processing Waste Definition: doing extra steps: i.e., doing more work than is necessary. Office example: Inspections (instead of eliminating errors), re-entering data into multiple information systems, making extra copies, generating unused reports, and unnecessarily-cumbersome processes. CU example: Group A scanned documents that a group B needed, too, but group A didn’t want to share the scanned version of the document, causing group B to have to redo the work.

Overproduction Waste Definition: doing more work than is necessary or work that was not requested. Office example: Printing paperwork or processing an order before it is needed: things can change, causing the work to have to be re-done. Any processing that is done on a routine schedule without considering current demand

Defect Waste Definition: Rework or repairs to correct mistakes: corrections take time and cause frustration. Office example: Data entry errors, invoice errors, engineering change orders, design flaws, employee turnover, and miscommunication.