Lean Principle - 8 Categories of Waste

The first step in improving labor productivity in construction is improving everyone’s ability to see the waste.

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Field Productivity: Lean Principle - 8 Categories of Waste

The human mind is amazing at pattern recognition - that is how our brains process the world.  Consider simple categories of threat vs. non-threat that keeps us alive. Diving deeper into categories of food - bitter (many poisons) or sweet (yummy + quick energy).  Colors - there are millions of them and they start with high levels of primary colors and get subsequently broken down into more detail.  

This level of categorization helps keep us alive and allows us to communicate with each other.  We can all look at a stop sign and say “red” where a computer would communicate ‘#e70707” as the specific color.  

We know that our role is to create the “Perfect Day” and we do that by looking at every step in the process identifying only those that add value and looking at the 3 major enemies of a lean operation.  

Waste can then be broken down into 8 major categories.  Like colors these are often interrelated. Look at your day and see if you can identify any of these:

  1. Defects
  2. Overproduction
  3. Waiting
  4. Non-Utilized Talent
  5. Transportation
  6. Inventory
  7. Motion
  8. Excess Processing

The acronym ‘DOWNTIME’ will help you remember.


Quiz others on your team.  Turn it into a game. This is where productivity improvements start.  

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Lean Principle - 8 Categories of Waste
Field labor is the often the biggest variable on a construction project - making it the biggest risk and opportunity....

Lean Principle - 8 Categories of Waste
Field labor is the often the biggest variable on a construction project - making it the biggest risk and opportunity....

Impacted Productivity - Stacking of Trades and Installation Efficiency
Each craftsperson needs about 200 usable square feet for a productive installation. This assumption is included in production units used to estimate and budget projects. Having less than that can impact productivity up to 50%.
Impacted Productivity - Highly variable Labor Scheduling (Level Your Schedule)
The biggest risk for a specialty contractor is the performance of on-site labor. One of the biggest impacts to labor productivity is having a schedule that requires large variations in labor.
Weekly Percent Planned Complete (PPC) and Project Performance
Improving the project planning and delivery process starts with improving predictability around the schedule. Nearly every Superintendent and Foreman is familiar with the Short-Interval-Plan (SIP) and typically fill one out weekly looking ahead 1+ weeks.