When did you last stop to consider what waste really means?

Waste is anything that does not add value to our lives or businesses and it takes many forms, from physical objects to intangible things like time and energy. Take a moment to evaluate what adds value to your businesses and what removes value. Take another moment to think through what adds value to your life and what does not. While our focus is on reducing repetitive and unnecessary activities in businesses, it is also critical to reflect on our personal lives. When we are clear about what truly adds value to us, we can reduce waste and live a more fulfilling and purposeful life.

In business, we must focus on two key areas namely customers and profits. 

Customers are happy to pay for goods and services that meet or exceed their expectations. We must therefore ask ourselves some critical questions:

How many times in our operations have we had to handle customer complaints? What caused the dissatisfaction? What happened when that product or service was rejected? How many resources had been utilized to produce the nonconforming product or service? The list is not exhaustive but a deep look like this helps us identify the points of loss or waste in our customer system.

Since every business exists to make profits, one way to maximise profits is by monitoring the use of limited resources, which helps us to minimize waste. Minimizing waste means output and quality significantly increase, customers get their products or services on time, there is increased customer loyalty, and the cost of production goes down therefore money is saved and profit increases.

Here are our top three effective strategies to eliminate waste in your business and increase your income and profitability;

First, Measure. We must create systems that track how we use resources in the business. Keep a simple record or log to track usage. This could be inputs used, time spent, bills paid or any other elements that go into the production and delivery of the product or service. Additionally, track customer feedback as it is very critical in measuring business success. In the famous words of Peter Drucker, “If you can’t measure it, you can’t manage it.”

Second, Teamwork. Waste reduction is everybody’s work so involve the whole team in. Identify a champion to spearhead the waste audit discussions among team members. These discussions seek to identify the activities, things, or even talent that add value to the business and those that do not. Once identified the goal is to eliminate the ones that do not add value. Examples of waste include; work instructions, processes, tools, inventory, finished goods or even talent that is no longer useful because of changing work conditions.

Third, Improve. We must create and promote a culture of continuous improvement through regular reviews of the situation that helps us refine the waste reduction strategies. Reviews should be clearly defined as either quarterly, semi-annually, or annually. The culture will help the team begin to see waste in daily actions and the identification cycle will be shortened over time.

In our view, these three strategies are the foundation of change in every business that will guide operations and lead to tangible results. Businesses that use them to reduce waste can significantly improve the quality and quantity of their outputs, increase customer loyalty, save money, and make higher profits.

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Lucy Moragwa is a Business Process Analyst with dynamic experience spanning several industries including construction, technology, retail, media, advertising, and branding. She is specialised in helping organisations develop operational efficiency and increase revenue, business process improvement and using root cause analysis to identify issues and develop process improvements. The heart of her work is to help organisations achieve cost savings through exceptional planning and implementation of business processes.