Every person in their work aspires to generate value for themselves: remember when I asked how you would feel if after the five minutes you hadn’t found paper and pen (see MUDA – PART 1)? Muda is frustrating and so obvious and evident that we don’t think to ask why… something that often happens with everything that is obvious and evident to us. Strengthened by this evident obviousness, we embark on the safe path of seeking and removing MUDA. This is the way to improve any product and production system: increasing value (units produced but also adding functions for which the customer is willing to pay) and eliminating MUDA. Muda is an unequivocal criterion that directly relates what we do and what we use with the person for whom we do it: the customer. It is so fundamental that Ohno dares to say: “Consider the waste of overproduction for example. It is not an exaggeration to say that in a low-growth period such waste is a crime against society more than a business loss. Eliminating waste must be a business’s first objective.” Notice the concept of ‘society’: it is something that concerns ALL OF US. It is an enemy of everyone. It is not understood why the hunt for MUDA and their removal have not always been the most developed activities by all humans: but since it removes frustration, makes us victorious in competition, and in the end protects society and protects us all: few things can do as much, at the moment I can’t think of any. So what are we waiting for? Over the years, I have encountered a surprising difficulty from many people in accepting the concept of MUDA for what it is. They confuse it with an ‘error’ or something that went wrong, or at best, they accept muda only in cases where they already see a possible solution to remove it: the definition of MUDA is simply the absence of value (for the customer!) and has no relation to the cause for which that specific MUDA exists… and it’s not even that if we find a ‘reasonable’ reason that MUDA becomes value… It is precisely the MUDA that we do not see today and for which we have no idea how to remove today that hide the greatest potential for improvement: what sense does this recurring confusion make, what sense does the enormous difficulty encountered in obtaining rapid understanding and willing commitment make? I have sought answers for years, and little by little, I found them: Ohno was brilliant in intuitively understanding that MUDA (waste, here we go again with the unfaithful English translation—waste in Japanese is NOT muda but mottainai!) are a crime against society, and I dare to widen the horizon even more: they are a crime against all humanity… and so? Is this perhaps enough to remove all difficulties and obstacles? Evidently not, something else is needed. Maybe we will write an appendix chapter dedicated to the MUDA of thought, but there is little doubt about the existence of something that vehemently opposes kaizen, whose symptom is precisely the difficulty in grasping the key of MUDA. What then opposes a smooth and fruitful search, identification, and removal of muda? To date, the best answers I have found come from a sophisticated systemic analysis that forced me to re-examine what I initially pretended to accept as obvious and evident: kaizen of production processes requires not taking anything for granted, the kaizen of kaizen is no less. I simplify as much as possible a part of what I found: each of us is a living biological system, but always a system. We are enormously complex, our functioning is indescribably complex, but not incomprehensible, not mysterious, no more than any other form of matter. It is necessary to develop specific learning to fully utilize MUDA, which does not only concern MUDA (in themselves relatively easy to catch) but concerns how our system manages continuous improvement, which is one of the possibilities that each system has to respond to the need to survive, the drive to survive. What do you mean by “one of the possibilities”? Are there perhaps other possibilities to respond to the need to survive? At least one yes, we all have it before our eyes every day: not improving, not changing anything, attempting not to change anything… it is not my path and I hope it is not yours either. I found two formidable orders of factors that make the blockage to recognizing Muda and continuous improvement completely sensible. The intertwining of elements and correlations is astonishing once you manage to know and understand a bit more about how we function: guilt, error, inadequacy, devaluation, and fear of being expelled are the first processes our system executes when called to deal with MUDA, executing neural software largely hereditary. We all have these neural software programs, our DNA transmits them to us, the fruit and gift of millions of years of evolution: all these neural software programs have protected and made possible our survival as a species over millions of years, and it is relatively easy (not necessarily short) to identify both the “reasons” for their configuration and the survival advantages for the species and the individual in dealing with the environments in which our species evolved. Environments that have changed little for millions of years… in a few hundred years, the impact of our species on the environment, the only living species capable of modifying the environment to make it suitable for its own survival on such a large scale, has made our old hereditary software increasingly unsuitable for the purpose. But they are still the hereditary neural software programs we all primarily rely on, whether we like it or not, whether we know it or not, to “guide” our lives and survive with more or less ease. This is the first order of factors that hinder the recognition of Muda and continuous improvement. There is a second, as I mentioned, let’s see it. Learning is constructing and modifying new neural software, no more and no less, a process that occurs under the conditions prescribed by our DNA: for example, a condition (not the only one, of course) that must be met is that the system (individual subject, group, organization) accepts and recognizes the necessity to learn and change. Attention, the term used is a precise key: necessity, not opportunity. Again: when this condition is verified, it is essential to be prepared to deal with a vital necessity of each living subject constituted by obtaining continuous proof of its good functioning, which includes the constant search for confirmation of the good functioning (effectiveness, efficiency) of its neural software. This, strictly correlated with the factors of the first order, makes perfect sense of both the “unavailability” to identify Muda and their (initially for sure… but it can go on for a lifetime) conversion into “error” or “bad luck (something went wrong)” and the limited willingness to recognize those for which a solution has already been found (quickly obtaining confirmation of one’s good functioning). What I myself for years considered a bizarreness, nonsense, the result of someone’s error (including myself naturally, indeed myself first), I managed to transform into something totally sensible and above all, manageable and improvable. And this too is kaizen: identifying the muda of the kaizen enabling process is part of the kaizen of kaizen made possible by an activity we will explore shortly, grasp the problem with the support of a deceptively simple and banal tool, the A3.
Keys:
- Understanding Muda: Explaining the concept of muda and its significance in improving productivity and value for the customer.
- Challenges in Identifying Muda: Highlighting the common difficulties in recognizing and accepting muda, even among experienced professionals.
- Systemic Analysis: The importance of a sophisticated systemic analysis to truly understand and address muda.
- Biological and Systemic Factors: Discussing the role of hereditary neural software and systemic factors in hindering the recognition and removal of muda.
- Necessity for Learning and Change: Emphasizing the necessity, not just the opportunity, for continuous learning and change to achieve continuous improvement.
- Kaizen of Kaizen: Introducing the concept of the kaizen of kaizen, the continuous improvement of the continuous improvement process itself.