The Toyota Way: 14 Management Principles From the World's Greatest Manufacturer

by Jeffrey K. Liker

How do you distinguish the value-added work from waste? Consider an office where engineers are all very busy designing products, sitting in front of the computer, looking up technical specifications, and having meetings with co-workers or suppliers. Are they doing value-added work? The answer is you cannot measure an engineer's value-added productivity by looking at what he or she is doing. You have to follow the progress of the actual product the engineer is working on as it is being transformed into a final product (or service). Engineers transform information into a design, so you look at such things as 1) at what points do the engineers make decisions that directly affect the product? and 2) when do the engineers actually conduct important tests or do an analysis that impacts those decisions? When you start asking these kinds of questions, you're likely to find that typical engineers (or any white-collar professionals) are working like maniacs churning out all sorts of information. The problem is that very little of their work is truly "value added," i.e., work that ends up actually shaping the final product. Consider the example of an engineering analysis group. They generate and accumulate various complex analyses for a project. Then what happens? The reports sit and wait in an information warehouse (inventory) until someone from another department accesses the reports. If we continue to follow the path of the information, you'll most likely find that any decisions b...