“Packaging” is spelled M-U-D-A

In Mike Wroblewski’s blog “Got Boondoggle?” he comments on just how much packaging and dunnage is not visible in Toyota’s Industrial Equipment plant. Of course that is remarkable because of just how common it is to find the opposite condition. Factories (and offices) have lots of packaging around, and spend lots of time dealing with it.

Toyota has been working on this a long time. They have the added advantage of being an 800 pound gorilla with most of their suppliers. They can specify packaging and insist on things being done a certain way. In a lot of cases it is the supplier that is the 800 pound gorilla, and a lot of small companies have a hard time being heard. But you can still make a lot of difference if you apply the principle that packaging is muda.

A frequently invoked (and overworked analogy) is the assembler or operator as a surgeon. Everything must be ready for the value-add operation to be performed waste free. If there is waste in the process, keep it away from this point. Surgical instruments come in packages. But I can assure you the surgeon is not unwrapping the scalpel. So who is?

The instruments are prepared and made ready for use by the staff.

Now take this to your factory floor. The first step is to keep dunnage and packaging out of the production area. There are actually a lot of advantages to doing this. The chief one is obviously optimizing your value-add time. But all of that packaging also takes up space. EVERYTHING that enters the production area MUST have a process (meaning a person!) to get it OUT of the production area. Since you have to unpackage that stuff anyway, do it before it gets to production. This means that someone else picks the part and prepares it for use just like the staff in the operating room.

Do this and you have applied one of the principles Liker and Meier point out in The Toyota Way Fieldbook – if you can’t eliminate sources of variation, then isolate them. In other words, set up a barrier that contains the waste so that your value-adding operation sees the result of a perfect supplier.

You can then take the next step: Do this at receiving. If the parts do not arrive from the supplier packed the way that your internal material conveyance system needs them, then put the resources into receiving to convert what you get from your suppliers into what you wish you got from them.

This is applying the principle of systematically pushing waste upstream, closer to the point where it originates. The other thing you have done is force yourself to dedicate resources to deal with this waste instead of spreading it so thin the cost is hidden. You will know what it costs you in terms of people, time, space, etc. to deal with the fact that your suppliers don’t ship what you need. By highlighting the problem instead of burying it, you have the opportunity to address it.

One more thing – it might seem easier to take these little wastes and spread them thin. After all, if everybody just does one or two trivial tasks, it doesn’t seem so bad, does it? It is those trivial wastes, those 5 second, 30 second, 1 minute little things that accumulate to half your productivity. It takes work to see them and eliminate them. Don’t add more to the process on purpose.

2 Replies to ““Packaging” is spelled M-U-D-A”

  1. At the Toyota Hebron Supply Parts Distribution Facility where I was for some time, our suppliers provided material in recyclable plastic bins: at the receive dock, those bins would be immediately transferred into a location in the Hebron facility — with no unpacking steps. But, when the plastic bin was exhausted, there would be an added step in the end where the bins would be returned back to the supplier.

    It’s an amazing but simple way of moving material and eliminating the packaging AND the steps that go along with packaging in the supply chain.

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