The Cost of Wasted Time

The Cost of Wasted Time

We want to remain efficient at work but can’t always do it due to various pressures, such as short notice variations in customer requirements, staff holidays and sickness. It can also be due to the ways we work.

Sometimes we are unable to perform in our jobs, due to the fact that something needs to be done by someone else in another department or when a supplier hasn’t provided us with what we need. We can’t move the process forward until those steps of the process are complete.

The key question is, what do we do when these things happen? Do we sit and twiddle our thumbs?

If the steps are critical and you cannot move onto another task, then sometimes we have no choice but to wait around. Other times we can move onto something else but then when the original task comes back around, we are so occupied with the task we moved onto that we cannot go back to the original one until much later.

Does this make us efficient? No, not really! All we are trying to do is satisfy all of our customers, whether they are internal or external.

We do, however, need to identify an accurate cost of how much this inefficiency represents and this, ironically, can also take a little time.

First things first, we need to understand what we call “value”.

This is "value, in the eyes of the customer”, and is defined as “everything we do that the customer considers as something they would be prepared to pay for”. Any tasks you carry out that fall into this category are called “Value Added” processes (VA).

The tasks that take up time and effort that we would not expect the customer to pay for are called "Non-Value Added" time (NVA) and these are classified under the category of “Waste”.

There are 8 wastes in Continuous Improvement, details of which I will elaborate on another time, but just to let you know that they are as follows:

Defects

Overproduction

Waiting

Non-Utilised Skills

Transportation

Inventory

Motion

Extra Processing

These wastes were originally named by Toyota as part of the “Toyota Production System”, so yes they do originate from manufacturing, but please note that over the years, people have recognised how much they apply to every business sector across the globe.

Reviewing the tasks that we currently carry out daily to identify, if any, contain the 8 Wastes, is very important.

We need to understand whether there are any parts of the process or tasks that can be changed, or whether any tasks that form part of the process can be reduced or removed.

Think about it in this way: Every time we stop a task, because of a problem we encounter it costs (the company we work for) money.

I wanted to share a little calculation, which demonstrates the impact of simply just wasting 30 minutes per day across a department of 15 people, and the importance of reducing this time.

You work in a department of 15 people.

Every day each person cannot carry out a task, due to waiting for another part of the process to be carried out by someone else. Every day these people have to wait 30 minutes because of this.

Each person’s hourly rate is equivalent to £15 per hour

Daily this translates to £112.50 per day, so based on 21 days per month its £2,362.50 (including holidays).

Based on 252 days per year it is £28,350 per year (including average UK holidays)

This is just an average day within a small to medium sized department of 15 people.

I’m sure at this stage, you will be able to hand on heart say that you and everyone you work with find something in their job that affects the way they work, and has an impact on their efficiency?

I’m also sure that everyone you work with will waste a minimum of 30 minutes per day, and this will be due to something else happening that has a knock-on effect on their job.

People tend to say, “It’s just the way things are” unless you start questioning, “Is it really?”. Then you start to question why it happens and whether you can change anything.

So, I will try and give you a place to start by providing you with a few ideas, which might assist you.

• Write down all the tasks you carry out at work.
• Time each of those tasks and write them down (make sure you are honest, otherwise you are only cheating yourself).
• Do this daily, until you have a full picture of what your working week looks like.
• Score each of those daily tasks between 0 and 5 (you are looking at whether these tasks are value added or non-value added. (0 being NVA and 5 being VA)).

The higher scores, denote the fact that you are spending VA time on the tasks and this is a good thing as you are only spending time on tasks that your customer would pay for.

The lower scores denote that you are spending NVA time on tasks. This means that you need to look at the tasks you are carrying out in order to reduce or remove steps within the process.

The aim is to find a way to increase the scores.

Look at one task at a time, and once you have adjusted the tasks, re-score with revisions.

This is one way to start on your journey of Continuous Improvement, with the aim of reviewing your current daily tasks.

If you’ve benefitted from this, please share it with your friends or colleagues.

Full Circle have 3 Continuous Improvement training programmes that go into much more depth and provide you and your team with the ability to “Learn, Do, Implement”.

Our programmes enable you to recognise who your improvement champions are, how to develop them and move your improvements forward, especially in the competitive world we live in.

Why not take a look at our Initiate training programme, your first steps to developing and empowering continuous improvement champions within your organisation.

We also have a free Facebook community, where there is a weekly live session sharing continuous improvement methods, as well as supporting you in your CI journey.

In addition, we have a free downloadable PDF called "Taking Continuous Improvement from Concept to Business Reality". There is a newsletter sign up form on there, but please note we don't believe in spammy emails so you won't hear from us all the time.

Thanks for reading and have a fabulous week

Liz