Lean Onboarding Series – The 8 Wastes

The Eight Wastes, and the Desk That Would Not Fit Through the Door

Here’s the deal. Lean genuinely is simple once you understand one core system. Learn the eight recognized wastes, identify them through practices like 3S or 5S, let them genuinely annoy you once you can actually see them, and make a real improvement, even a tiny one, to eliminate each one as it appears. Paul Akers built an entire philosophy around exactly that approach in his book Two Second Lean, and I genuinely love how simple he makes it.

The Two Wastes That Create All the Others

Overproduction and excess inventory function as the root wastes, the ones that genuinely give rise to most of the others. Overproduction means making more than what is actually needed right now. Excess inventory means materials, assets, or products sitting around unused, not yet ready to actually be applied to real work.

Once those two exist, specific consequences follow predictably. Excess inventory tends to produce genuine defects, since materials sitting around unused, or people rushing through production without focusing on quality, create real imperfections that fail to meet the actual standard required. Excess inventory also creates unnecessary transportation, the waste of moving things from one place to another, and unnecessary motion, wasted physical effort and movement that can genuinely cause injury over time.

Defects and unnecessary movement together tend to produce overprocessing, meaning more steps in a workflow than the work actually requires. Overprocessing itself tends to produce waiting, workers waiting on work, or work waiting on workers, a genuine imbalance and lack of flow that wastes real time. And underneath nearly all of this sits one final waste worth naming directly, unused talent, meaning a genuine failure to draw on the actual skill and knowledge already present within the team.

A True Story That Ties Every Waste Together

Here is a real example I use constantly during onboarding, because it shows exactly how these wastes cascade from one into the next. A crew was building eight desks outside a trailer. They cut all the lumber for all eight desks at once before confirming the first one actually went together correctly. That is genuine overproduction, and it immediately created excess inventory, cut lumber sitting around that was not actually needed yet.

Once they started assembling the first desk, they discovered the boards had been cut wrong, and since they had already cut all eight the same way, every single one carried the same defect. Correcting that meant real overprocessing, recutting and reassembling work that should never have needed to happen in the first place, along with real transportation and motion moving lumber back and forth to fix it. All of that produced genuine waiting time while the correction actually happened.

Notice how quickly this cascaded. A single early decision, cutting all eight before confirming the first one worked, set off nearly every other waste on the entire list within a matter of hours. That is exactly why catching overproduction and excess inventory early matters so much. Left unaddressed, they rarely stay contained to just themselves.

Here is where the story gets even more interesting. Once they finally finished assembling one desk and tried to move it into the building, it would not fit through the door. They ended up removing two entire door frames on the exterior of the trailer just to get the desk inside, a task that took roughly two full days when it should have taken about four hours.

The actual root cause behind every single one of these wastes was unused talent. The team already knew, from past experience, that the correct approach was building desks directly inside the trailer, on a protective sheet laid out specifically for that purpose, doing a real mock-up first to confirm everything fit before building all eight. That knowledge already existed within the team. It simply was not applied this time.

That is genuinely the most important lesson in the whole story. Seven distinct wastes, overproduction, excess inventory, a defect, transportation, motion, overprocessing, and waiting, all traced back to the same single root cause. A team failing to use knowledge it already genuinely possessed. No new training would have fixed this. Simply following what the team already knew would have.

Watch for these signs overproduction and excess inventory are quietly setting up the same cascade of waste on your own project.

• Work completed well ahead of confirming the first unit actually functions correctly before producing more of it.
• Materials or completed components sitting around unused, waiting for a later step that has not caught up yet.
• A known best practice from past experience not actually being applied on the current task.

Why Memorizing These Eight Wastes in Order Matters

Every worker genuinely has the opportunity to memorize these eight wastes in a consistent order. Overproduction, excess inventory, defects, transportation, motion, overprocessing, waiting, and unused talent. Paul Akers has a widely available video specifically walking through how to memorize them in sequence, and that habit of memorization matters, because you cannot fix waste you do not genuinely recognize when you actually see it.

How to Actually Put This Into Daily Practice

I recommend every worker carry a real waste card, a simple physical reference listing all eight wastes clearly. As part of the morning crew preparation huddle, crews should be genuinely taught to look for these specific wastes, and actively praised when they find and eliminate one, treating that discovery as a genuine win rather than something embarrassing to hide.

Watch for these signs a team is actually putting the eight wastes framework into practice daily, rather than simply knowing the list exists.

• A physical waste reference card genuinely used and referenced by workers in the field, not left in a drawer somewhere.
• Morning huddles that specifically ask whether anyone identified a waste the previous day, with real praise given for finding one.
• Small, genuine improvements made consistently, even tiny ones, rather than waiting for a major problem before addressing waste at all.

Why This Simple System Deserves Real Respect

None of this requires an elaborate program to implement. It requires genuinely learning to see these eight specific patterns, letting them bother you enough to actually want to fix them, and treating every small improvement as a real, worthwhile win rather than something too minor to bother with.

If your project needs superintendent coaching, project support, or leadership development, Elevate Construction can help your teams build genuine fluency in the eight wastes, turning this simple framework into a daily habit rather than a concept workers hear about once during onboarding and never revisit again.

So here is the challenge. At your next crew huddle, ask directly whether anyone noticed one of these eight wastes the previous day. If the room goes quiet, that silence itself is worth paying attention to, since waste is almost always present somewhere. The real question is simply whether your team has genuinely learned to see it yet.

Jason Schroeder said it plainly: “Once you see waste, you can go fix it.” Learn to see these eight patterns clearly, and fixing them becomes the easy part.

On we go.

FAQ

Why are overproduction and excess inventory described as the root wastes behind the other six?

Because making more than is actually needed, or allowing materials to sit unused, creates the conditions that lead directly to defects, unnecessary transportation and motion, overprocessing, and waiting. Addressing overproduction and excess inventory first tends to prevent several of the other wastes from ever developing in the first place, which is why they are treated as the foundation the rest of the pattern builds from.

Why did removing two door frames end up taking far longer than the article’s benchmark of four hours?

Because the task was never actually planned for, requiring the crew to improvise a correction under pressure rather than execute a prepared, pre-planned process. Unplanned corrective work almost always takes longer than planned work of similar scope, since the crew has to figure out the right approach in real time instead of simply following a method already proven to work.

Why does the article emphasize memorizing the eight wastes in a specific, consistent order?

Because a consistent order makes recall faster and more reliable in the field, where workers need to recognize waste quickly rather than searching their memory for a loosely remembered list. Memorizing them in sequence turns the framework into a genuine mental tool that can actually be applied in real time, rather than a concept understood only abstractly.

Why does the article recommend actively praising workers who identify waste, rather than simply expecting them to report it?

Because genuine praise reinforces the behavior you actually want repeated, encouraging workers to keep looking for waste rather than staying quiet out of concern that pointing out a problem might reflect poorly on them or their team. Treating waste identification as a genuine win, rather than an embarrassing admission, is what sustains this habit as part of daily practice over the long term.