Today we’ll learn Toyota’s thorough waste elimination applied to farming.
[Intro Video]
Hi, this is Mike Negami, Lean Sigma Black Belt.
Continuing from the last video, we’ll learn more from the book ‘The Lean Farm’.
I put a link about this book in this video’s description.
Today’s theme is “how to eliminate wastes thoroughly on a farm”.
I made a video about Toyota’s 7 Wastes a long time ago.
If you haven’t watched that video, watch it first because it shows the 7 Wastes’
basics.
Farming is a repeated process.
In this book, they mentioned the Value Stream Map of their current process.
I also drew a Value Stream Map based on the book.
In summary, one of their processes is: first plan the project, order seeds based on it,
prepare the soil, plant the seeds, hoe, irrigate, spray to repel pests, harvest, wash, store
in a cooler, bunch or package, deliver, display, receive money and deposit it.
After making the Value Stream Map, you’ll discuss where wastes are in your process with
your team.
Because of the visualization, you can write notes and it will make you brainstorming easier.
In this book, before the topic of the 7 Wastes, it explains that all actions in a process
can be categorized into one of the following three:
The 1st one is Value-Added Action: Actions that add value to customers.
Next is Type 1 Muda: ‘Muda’ means waste in Japanese.
Actions that do not add value but are necessary.
The 3rd one is Type 2 Muda, which is pure waste.
All the 7 Wastes are this Type 2 Muda.
In a Kaizen activity, you’ll not only eliminate Type 2 Muda, but also minimize Type 1 Muda
and conduct your Value-Added Actions more efficiently so that you can aim to maximize
your total value.
Therefore, the Lean Method and Lean Sigma can generate higher productivity and value
with less work, and thy have many methods and tools for that.
Usually we concentrate on eliminating Type 2 Muda, but before that, it’s important
to know which steps in your operation actually add value to your products or service.
Let's do this classification on the Value Stream Map previously made.
‘Plan the project’ itself does not add any value to customers, but it is Type 1 Muda
because it’s necessary.
However, if you make a mistake on sales forecasts, you may get a lot of waste later.
Next is ‘order seeds’.
Seeds themselves have value, but the act of ordering does not add any value, therefore
it’s Type 1 Muda as is ‘Prepare the soil’.
‘Plant the seeds’ adds value to the products.
When you’ve classified all the steps, this is the completion.
You can see that the actions in ‘plant the seeds’, ‘harvest’, and actions after
harvesting are Value-Added actions and important.
You have to eliminate Type 2 Muda immediately, and Type 1 Muda has a lot of room for improvement
at the beginning, but as improvement progresses, you’ll not take too much time on them.
On the contrary, you would like to spend more time on actions that increase the value of
your products and services.
The author says that his team spends a lot of time on the Value-Added Actions shown here,
which means they keep adding value in their products.
It’s awesome.
So how can we eliminate Type 2 Muda and minimize Type 1 Muda?
Here we are going to use Toyota's 7 Wastes.
The 7 Wastes are: ‘Defects’, ‘Overproduction’, ‘Waiting’, ‘Non-value adding processing’,
‘Transportation’, ‘Inventory’ and ‘Motion’.
All of these apply to any companies.
My last video was about the 5S activities on the farm.
We can understand that they were able to considerably reduce wastes of ‘Waiting’, ‘Transportation’
and ‘Motion’.
Additionally, Lean Sigma has another waste: ‘Employee's unused creativity’.
There are many times that frontline employees sometimes have an great idea.
Other times, they practice a solution that the boss doesn’t even know about.
In Lean Sigma, we consider such a condition as waste.
We value those people and ask them to share their ideas, then we make best practices to
use throughout the company.
By the way, we remember these 8 wastes as the acronym, ‘DOWNTIME’.
In this book, the author included ‘Unevenness’ and ‘Overburden’ as wastes.
Toyota, the creator of the 7 Wastes, treats them as another group and emphasizes the order
of ‘Unevenness’, ‘Overburden’ and ‘Waste’.
Those three should all be eliminated, but ‘Unevenness’ is the root cause.
Toyota considers that when production amounts or some operations are uneven, later somewhere
else there will be ‘Overburden’ and it will cause ‘Waste’.
Therefore, Toyota has many methods to eliminate unevenness such as Heijunka, which is Production
Leveling and Takt Time.
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