7 Wastes - Waiting time

What really irritates you? I was watching the Grumpy old men and women recently and it seems that there is no end to the things in life that can get up someones nose. One of my pet irritations is waiting for ..... well anything really. People who know me realise that I am never late - ever! And when other people are late when I am meeting them then that really irks.

On a similar theme I notice that busy people are always doing things. And successful people are usually very busy. How many successful businesses are run by people who just hang around waiting? I don't know of any and the really successful entrepreneurs I do know are always doing, never waiting.

So if we are not successful by waiting around and if waiting around is deeply irritating we should eradicate all waiting. I know this is not very scientific, but it is logical. In business processes what are those irritating waits we have that stops us being successful? There are many but I mention just 3 here:

• Being late. Meetings starting late, people arriving late, reports written late. If we delay doing something by 1 week, that is 2% of your year. On a £200,000 target that is a potential cost of £4000.
• Waiting for equipment. A few years ago I conducted an audit of a drawing office for company in the aerospace industry. Their engineers had to wait to get drawings from the reprographics store for on average 1 hour. 20 engineers equalled 20 hours non-productive time every day. An enormous cost that justified new technology to deliver improved process efficiency.
• Decisions. Whole books can and probably have been written on the cost of delayed decisions, from politicians and wars to slow procurement decisions or recruitment decisions. Lost opportunities by being slow on the uptake. The cost of not knowing what to do can be difficult to calculate, but is usually high. With procurement if a new piece of technology is going to save £x,000s delay is going to cost £x,000s. But the process to make these decisions in too many organizations is not analysed. Too many people want to be involved but add little or no value.

Waiting time: High on irritation - high on cost!