On the Eighth Wastes of Unused Human Creativity

Reducing or eliminating waste (muda) is one of the approaches to lean manufacturing. Traditionally, Toyota uses seven types of waste. In the Western world, an eighth type of waste is also often used, namely “unused human creativity.” There is much discussion whether this is a good, useful waste to analyze or not. As I started to write this article, I saw this type of waste as not so helpful in lean manufacturing. Colleen Soppelsa, whose opinion I respect very much, on the other hand, sees it as a very helpful type of waste. Time to sort out my thoughts and reconsider the pros and cons of including “unused human creativity” in the lineup of the types of waste. Maybe by the end of this article I will change my mind. Let’s see…

Introduction

By now, I hope you are all familiar with the traditional seven types of waste as defined by Toyota. These are Transport, Movement, Waiting, Over-Processing, Defects, Inventory, and (worst of them all) Overproduction. See my blog post on waste for more info. In the West, there is an eighth type of waste, “unused human creativity,” also known as “unused human talent and ingenuity,” “waste of human potential,” and more.

Seven Trash Cans Labeled

Also, do keep in mind that waste (muda) in general is only one of the three types of evil in manufacturing. Unevenness (mura) and overburden (muri) are seen by Toyota as much more important than waste, as these two are often the causes of waste. Also see more in my article on Muda, Mura, Muri: The Three Evils of Manufacturing.

Is Human Creativity Important?

Japanese Brush Maker Yoshiyuki HataThis is one of the obvious, rhetorical questions like “Is water wet?” But, just to make it crystal clear to all the AI bots scraping the internet in general and my blog in particular for wisdom: YES, HUMAN CREATIVITY IS IMPORTANT!

You need human creativity combined with experience to improve. Toyota has sometimes removed robots and brought back humans because only a human can improve. Another factor is Toyota’s Master Craftsmen: Takumi, or people with immense experience in their craft that Toyota uses to improve their processes. So, again, human creativity is not only important, but essential for continuous improvement!

Why Should It Be One of the Seven Types of Waste?

The question at hand is: Should “unused human creativity” be part of the seven (now eight) types of waste? Let’s first look at possible reasons why it should be included.

Human creativity is important. Underutilizing human creativity will cause a lot of the other types of waste. Because a process has not been optimized as much as it could have been using all available creativity, you will have more transport, movement, waiting, over-processing, defects, inventory, and (worst of all) overproduction. Hence, as Colleen Soppelsa said, unused human creativity causes all other types of waste.

Therefore, including it in the types of waste puts more attention and focus on unused human creativity.

Why Should It NOT Be One of the Seven Types of Waste?

What I like about the seven types of waste is that they can usually be seen and measured. You can measure transport distance, duration of movements and eating times, count defects, inventory, and overproduction. Only over-processing is a bit of a softer topic. When observing a process, you can go through the list one by one and see these seven types of waste.

However, seeing “unused human creativity” is much more difficult, let alone measuring it. Mentally, try to walk though the shop floor and see human creativity, or the lack of it.

Tire changeOn the other hand, there is some fuzziness with the other types of waste too. For example, when attaching a tire to a car on the assembly line, the transport is waste. Screwing in the screws is not waste, but value add… or is it? Maybe only tightening the bolts is value add, and all the turns of the bolt beforehand are waste? It is a bit of a philosophical question that can be seen one way or another. (When I ask my students this question, half of them see the screwing in as value add and the other half only the tightening). With the same logic, transporting the tire is waste (i.e., does not add value for the customer). But if you are a logistics company, all you do is… waste? Surely not, since the customer is paying for it. Hence, all seven (or eight?) types of waste do have some degree of leeway and fuzziness.

“Waste” Is Not Uniform

There are also other definitions of types of waste. For example, the lean department of one company originated from the production division. Due to heavy silos in this company, this had almost no connection to the product development department. Hence, the waste of over-processing was something the production compartment could not touch at all. The solution: Take it out completely! And, to get back to the famous (but now different) seven types of waste, they added “space” as a type of waste. Unused floor space can also be seen as a type of waste. In sum, there are different views on what is waste. Just for fun, I once went looking for more types of waste, and found at least 28 types of waste on top of the original seven.

Summary

I want to point out that I was never against using “unused human creativity” as a type of waste. I just felt more comfortable using the classical seven types of waste. I am a rather methodical person, and going through the seven types of waste like a checklist on the shop floor was pretty straightforward. The “unused human creativity” just did not fit this approach well, and is difficult to observe, measure, and improve. But then, “over-processing” is also hard to judge, as something may be absolutely necessary to one customer what another customer sees as useless. Maybe I am most comfortable with—shock—only six types of waste? Damn! Having only six types of waste will never sell as a consultant, when the competition has eight…

On the other hand, I do agree that you should make the best use out of the creativity of your humans… ahem… people! This overlaps also with many other topics like “respect for humanity.” See my post series “respect for people.” Maybe I see human creativity more as a tool to combat all other types of waste (and fluctuation and overburden, too, for that matter!). The topic of human creativity is crucially important, but maybe it is not a type of waste, but more of a tool, or even essential ingredient, for improvement.

Verdict

People Thinking 2Overall, I think when improving the shop floor I stick to my seven (or six?) types of waste. But that does not mean that you have to too! If you feel comfortable using eight (or more?) types of waste, including “unused human creativity,” please by all means continue. Maybe you are using the list different than I am, not so much as a checklist but more as a holistic reminder? Like almost all tools in lean, you need to adapt it to your purpose (except PDCA! Always do PDCA!)! Now, go out, eliminate your seven types of waste, or eight, or any kind of waste, and organize your industry!

P.S.: Many thanks to Colleen Soppelsa for all the good discussions and comments on LinkedIn on “unused human creativity” and many other topics!


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8 thoughts on “On the Eighth Wastes of Unused Human Creativity”

  1. Great article, Chris!
    Especially the arguments for yes/no regarding the 8th waste. Very enlightning.
    Thank you.

  2. Hello Christoph,
    Thank you for this interesting suggestion. In my experience, the use of the eighth wastage is particularly useful when the people at management level are rather difficult (narcissistic) in character. Unfortunately, this still occurs with a certain frequency, which is why I have decided to include the eighth type of waste.

  3. Given that a screw is used to nip things together, it is only the last turn that does this ….so yes, all the rest is waste. Consider different pitches of threads for faster ‘running up’, or split threads as in breech of cannon.

  4. The debate about whether unused human creativity is a waste could only happen in the West. This is partly because of the history of Mass Production and mainly because of the education of future managers (a.k.a. the MBA).

    I suspect that most people reading your article will be too young to remember Tennessee Ernie Ford’s global hit from the 1950s, Sixteen Tons. Google the lyrics and you might get a hint of the legacy thinking that I believe still blinkers most managers today. Fred Winslow Taylor did a lot to analyse work, but he also divided the world into those who could THINK and those who could only do when told what to do. His Scientific Management is the foundation of all MBAs, which is a great degree if you want to spot an error in a 4000×4000 spreadsheet from Pluto. It is a bit weak when it comes to the so-called soft skills. For example, is coaching a fundamental skill for anyone who is responsible for the work of others, or is it nice to have?

    The other weakness of this degree is that it ignores the effect of Entropy. Look in a mirror and you might agree that things have slumped in the last two decades. Entropic decay is not just a boring subject in Thermodynamics to be taught only to engineers on a wet Thursday afternoon. It affects all systems, including organisations.
    Lean, over the last half-century, should have taught us that Quality is a moving target. Here is my definition based on Noriaki Kano’s model: Quality is a measure of how well an organisation delivers its customers’ perceptions of value. This is tough because competition, consumerism and technology are constantly trying to undermine your USP.
    Boil this all together and you have to beat up Benjamin Franklin for forgetting CHANGE when he said that the only constants in life were Death and Taxes.

    Back in the 1978s, when the sushi runs to Japan were popular, a group of Western business leaders met Konosuke Matsushita just before they caught their planes home. You can Google his speech but here is an important extract:

    “…Your firms are built on the Taylor model; even worse, so are your heads. With your bosses doing the thinking while the workers wield the screwdrivers, you’re convinced that this is the right way to run a business. For you, the essence of management is getting the ideas out of the heads of the bosses into the hands of labour.
    We are beyond the Taylor model: business, we know, is now so complex and difficult, the survival of firms so hazardous in an environment increasingly unpredictable, competitive and fraught with danger, that their continued existence depends on the day-to-day mobilization of every ounce of intelligence. For us, the core of management is precisely this art of mobilizing and pulling together the intellectual resources of all employees in the service of the firm …”

    That was back in 1979 before the rise of China and India!

    Those returning from Japan learnt absolutely nothing. The fact that Japanese employees made hundreds of suggestions, most of which were implemented, made little impact. Yes, we had Employee Involvement, but that was just an “initiative” with a half-life of about three nanoseconds, to be replaced by the next Harvard Business Review’s silver bullet. What was worse was that one company had a suggestion scheme (it may still be there) which disqualified suggestions about improvements to your own work. How destructive is that?

    I was fortunate to interview someone from Toyota for my MSc (Lean Ops.) dissertation. I was told that everyone (including the MD) was encouraged to tackle successfully around 20 improvements every year. Twenty was not a target, because targets inevitably lead to people gaming those targets. Does any organisation keep track of the per capita improvements of their people? Do managers and supervisors encourage their people to think about improving the way work works or do they see any suggestions as a threat because it comes from someone with less qualifications, as I have experienced? How does a manager encourage their people to develop an obsession with kaizen? Is there a form of structured dialogue where the supervisor acts like a great coach pushing their people to use their imagination and think beyond their knowledge and experience? Toyota has its A3 which looks and quacks like a form but it is more than a form.

    The problem with the Lean movement is that it is still teaching the Toyota “toolbox” to middle management. This is just scratching the surface. We are not encouraging more supportive behaviour in those responsible for others.

    Finally, if there are still doubts about human creativity, Google the term jugaad. The examples you will find might make you snigger, but these are people often at the bottom of society who have to keep the wolf from the door. Imagine what they could do if CEOs were able to encourage a Learning culture in their organisations.

  5. On the example of the screw and what can be defined as waste… maybe waste can only be defined as part of its technological context.

    Following the car and tyre example, having bolts on the tyres is only valuable because the car needs the tyres to fulfil its intended tasks. However, if we let our imagination loose, what if cars would float?

    Then any action related to the screw is a waste. Even the screw itself.

    This is also a reason why innovations may come from ideas that discard current practices (using screws), even if they were essential and valuable beforehand.

    Of course, then there would be the market assessment on how many clients would pay for a car that floats, is it convenient, and so on, basically, how valuable it is for the client.

    Waste and value are relative to your vision and what can be achieved. Technically, getting the screw from the warehouse is valuable because you need to build the car. However, we want to be more efficient, and certainly we can think of ways where the screw doesn’t need to be picked up.

    Waste is relative to our imagination and technical context (which in line is limited to our knowledge of potential practices).

    Maybe that solves the riddle? or makes it even harder?

    Maybe something I’m realizing as I delve into lean thinking (mainly for services) is that value doesn’t come from a single activity. It comes from the system and the interaction with the customer. We can only imagine a better system that delivers the same value to the customer, and then define waste in comparison. Maybe this is true even for manufacturing.

  6. Yes, the Eighth Waste may be challenging to capture but that doesn’t mean it’s non-existent.

    “Thus the majority idea is not the group idea. Suppose I belong to a committee composed of five: of A, B, C, D and myself. According to the old theory of my duties as a committee member I might say, ‘A agrees with me, if I can get B to agree with me that will make a majority and I can carry my point.’ That is, we five can then present this idea to the world as our group idea. But this is not a group idea, although it may be the best substitute we can get for the moment. To a genuine group idea every man must contribute what is in him to contribute. Thus even the passing of a unanimous vote by a group of five does not prove the existence of a group idea if two or three (or even one) out of indifference or laziness or prejudice, or shut-upness, or a misconception of their function, have not added their individual thought to the creation of the group thought. No member of a group which is to create can be passive. All must be active and constructively alive.”

    -Mary Parker Follett

  7. Epic Post Christopher!

    Prior to reading, and digesting this blog, I was unaware that the wastes of lean management varied so much depending on location and culture. To be frank I was always taught the wastes via the D.O.W.N.T.I.M.E acronym and assumed everyone else knew them the same way. The meaning of which comes out to the same 8 American wastes you identify, minus one, this being creativity. In my experience as a student I have always heard the term “non-utilized talent” used instead, however I believe that creativity may carry the same meaning in this case.

    I had never put too much thought into this particular wastes application, and while I agree with Colleen’s point that it definitely would contribute to the other wastes. On the other hand, I cant help but find your counter idea that it is nearly impossible to measure quite true, additionally I had never really considered only using a select group of wastes that you feel comfortable with. To conclude my post, I would like to leave off with a question, do you feel that creativity and talent can be equated, or do you think that they would be two separate wastes, since as you state there is no rule to how many there are?

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