Chapter 3
Waste
As we mentioned earlier, a Lean Six Sigma business model is characterized by a mindset of continuous and relentless elimination of waste. So, let’s talk about what waste really is. When you observe a process, be it manufacturing, retail, medical, what have you, you will generally observe two types of flows occurring. The first is activity; someone is doing something that leads to a product or service being created. The second type of flow is the transmission of information; data are being generated. For ease of illustration, let’s look at a typical manufacturing value stream (Fig. 3-1).
A value stream is a systemwide view of all ...
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