Reminder - Week 3 of Muda Walk for a Month

Week 3: 09/13 to 09/17 
The Theme this week is: Reduce Inventory
Have you seen any of these?

• Stacks of material at the job site?
• Rental equipment not being used?
• Trailers full of material?
• Stashes around the work area?
• Job site trailer’s closets stuffed  with supplies?
• Piles of fabricated materials in the yard?
• Boxes of paper goods stacked in the walk ways?
• Fabricated product on pallets in the warehouse?

All of these and many more are inventory.  Inventory is a double serious waste because it produces or hides other wastes. We don’t want the crews to ever run out of material, but we want to avoid as much inventory as possible while still allowing the work to FLOW.

When you spot inventory waste ask WHY – why do we have to keep this inventory? Keep asking why until you find the root cause and implement countermeasures.

Ways to reduce inventory are:

• Better job site planning and coordination. Use the Last Planner System of look-aheads and weekly work plans.
• Use a Kanban method. It means means a signal to refill the inventory. This is especially useful for consumables in the shop, field and even office supplies. Use a min/max marker. Use a card that is on a dual bin system so when one bin is empty pull the card and keep using the 2nd bin while the first bin is being refilled.
• Work with suppliers to service your material needs and include them in identifying how much material to stock. 

Record your improvements. Find the root cause. Implement improvements. Try something; if it doesn’t work try something else.