In his book 2 Second Lean, Paul Akers has a wonderful phrase “We want to have maximum value to flow to the customer.”
We just collected all of our 1:1 devices. Mostly it went well, but I messed up two things with sixth grade, which so far has taken me two hours to fix. One was my fault, one was not.
So, the value of those two hours did not flow to the customer. Students. Teachers. The larger Instructional Technology Resource Teacher group around me. The value of those two hours were eaten up by fixing the defects that I had created.
Paul talks about the concept of waste in Lean Production. Getting rid of the waste is a thoughtful framework when looking to improve a process.
The canonical lean wastes are (This is from Wikipedia)
- Transport (moving products that are not actually required to perform the processing)
- Inventory (all components, work in process, and finished product not being processed)
- Motion (people or equipment moving or walking more than is required to perform the processing)
- Waiting (waiting for the next production step, interruptions of production during shift change)
- Overproduction (production ahead of demand)
- Over Processing (resulting from poor tool or product design creating activity)
- Defects (the effort involved in inspecting for and fixing defects)
Some people apparently add an eighth or ninth waste.
- Not using the people and talents in your building.
- Not meeting customer’s expectations
Notes For Kevin 