The ninth type of waste - inefficient energy consumption

Taiichi Ohno's seven classic types of waste are well known in Lean management: defects, overproduction, waiting, transport, inventory, motion and overprocessing. Muda — the Japanese word for waste — has since been extended with an eighth type: unused talent. Lean means eliminating waste using these eight Mudas and creating value.

Because we believe there is always a better way, we go one step further and introduce another type: inefficient energy consumption.

Energy is one of the most important resources in manufacturing and also a significant factor in climate change. So far, resource consumption in production is neither transparent nor linked to customer value. To avoid inefficient consumption, we need to understand what customer value the use of energy creates and where meaningful savings can be achieved.

We define inefficient energy consumption as waste resulting from the inadequate use of energy for activities that do not add value.

Polaris VSM makes the resource consumption of individual process steps transparent and up to date. This shows where energy is wasted in production and where little value is created. To maximize customer value and minimize energy consumption, energy performance indicators (EnPIs) are calculated and made visible in digital value stream mapping.