Knowledge Base · Foundations
What is waste in a process?
In Lean thinking, waste is anything that consumes resources without adding value for the end customer. Time, money, materials and people's energy are all resources. If a step uses them and the customer would not pay for that step, it is waste, and it is a candidate for removal.
Chapter 1 of the book defines waste the way Lean does: anything that uses resources but does not add value to the end customer. The test is simple to state and harder to apply honestly. Look at any step in your process and ask whether the customer would care if that step disappeared. If the answer is no, the step is not serving the customer. It is serving the process itself.
Waste hides in ordinary office work, not just on factory floors. A report rewritten because it used the wrong figures is waste. So is an inbox holding hundreds of unread messages, a request travelling through a long chain of approvals, and a team member whose ideas are never asked for. The book groups these into eight common wastes, covered in the next question, and treats spotting them as a skill anyone can learn.
The book also frames waste as a stewardship issue. Resources, including people's time and talent, are entrusted to us. Tolerating steps that consume them for no one's benefit is poor stewardship of that trust. That framing is why waste is worth hunting even when a process appears to be working: working is not the same as worthwhile.
Related questions
Source: Continuous Improvement in the Workplace, Ch. 1 (Understanding Continuous Improvement).