Muda is a Japanese word meaning waste. While never a good thing, in a small business even a little muda can equal big problems. In this post we continue to explore ways that you can improve your bottom line by implementing process improvements. Having a process in place is a necessary first step. Once you have documentation the next thing on your To Do list should be to identify the areas of muda that are holding you back. If you need a little help tracking where all your things are (saving time in a number of ways), then try out our home and small business inventory application. Stockpile is easy to use and widely regarding by our customers as the best small business inventory tool they've ever used. Seriously, Stockpile is small business inventory at its best and free as well!
As much as we try to be efficient, we all know that there are areas of our lives where we could do things better. Stopping at the corner shop for a coffee adds time to your commute and certainly costs more than brewing a cup of joe at home. If the anticipation of that stop at the coffee shop is what gets you moving in the morning it is clearly worth it. Everyone has moments throughout the day when they are wasting time, money or both and they don’t feel like they are gaining any benefit from it. For your small business those moments can be the anchor that weighs you down and keeps you from reaching your goals. Just think about it. Every time you create a new list to manage your small business inventory counts - that's wasted time! Muda sucka!
Take a look at your processes. Are there any obvious areas for improvement? Often just seeing something in writing will illuminate an area where waste can be eliminated. Do you have build in redundancy? Does the duplication of effort benefit your business? In some cases, having a back-up is necessary. In other cases you are just duplicating effort and without any gain. Streamlining the process will allow you to reallocate employee resources to other tasks.
As they say in real estate “location, location, location!” The next area to examine for muda is the physical layout of your business. Are the tools that you need to do your job on a daily basis readily accessible? If not, could you relocate items so that they are easier to get to? If getting office supplies requires a walk down a hall or a trip past several co-workers there could be Muda lurking all along the way. A good way to get a read on where things are in your shop is to use Stockpile. Our small business inventory system is great for allocation products to their physical locations.
It’s easy to use that trip to the supply closet as a mini-break. Even if you just stop for a minute to chat with a co-worker it can break the flow of whatever you were working on and the next thing you know that two minute roundtrip has turned into a good fifteen unproductive minutes. If you are unsure of where the supply that you need can be found that is even worse still. Now you will lose time searching for what you need and likely interact with even more co-workers disrupting their workflow as well. As you start to add up all that lost time you will be able to clearly see just how much this inefficiency costs your business. Take a moment to think about what you could do with an extra fifteen or twenty minutes per day. Over the course of a week that would give you a solid 75 to 100 extra minutes. That kind of time can yield big results for your small business. Apply that time to product development, marketing, customer relations, whatever you think will generate the most impact for your business.
Writing down your processes and identifying muda are the first two steps to getting your small business on the right track. Using Stockpile’s innovative inventory management systems are another great way to eliminate waste in your company. In our next post we will discuss ways that process improvement can save you money. Check back with us soon for more great ideas for maximizing your small business.
