The origins of MUDA, OPTIMUM or seven wastes were from the Toyota engineer Taiichi Ohno who, in Toyoto Production System – Productivity Press 1988, described what he felt were the key wastes, that occurred in manufacturing. The original titles used by Ohno were the waste of; overproduction, inventory, waiting, motion, transportation, defects and processing but hopefully using OPTIMUM may make the seven titles a little more memorable.

OPTIMUM – The Seven Wastes (Muda)

OPTIMUM or MUDA can be defined as;

1. The waste of Overproduction
2. The waste of Processing
3. The waste of Time
4. The waste of Inventory
5. The waste of Motion
6. The waste of Unacceptable items (defects)
7. The waste of Movement (transportation)

These seven wastes were initially intended to be applied to the manufacturing environment but then more recent additions (see below) has made the approach suitable to any organisation, including service.

1. The waste of under utilised human resource
2. The waste of the environment (energy)
3. The waste of lost opportunities
4. The waste of duplication
5. The waste of misdirection

Much more practical details regarding MUDA and OPITMUM is provided in Vorley & Tickles book Quality Management (Tools & Techniques).

To enable delegates to:

• Know the theory of OPTIMUM and MUDA
• Know how to complete a OPTIMUM and MUDA exercise
• Understand the OPTIMUM and MUDA
• Be able to apply the OPTIMUM and MUDA
• Train others in the OPTIMUM and MUDA methodology
• Provide the opportunity to make real major financial saving through QM&T’s pre and post course supported assignment scheme.

Quality, Engineers, Software, Food & Drug, etc. professionals who wish to remove waste and non-value added activities from their process.

Morning
OPTIMUM and MUDA course is broken down into:

• Phase I: Principles behind OPTIMUM and MUDA
• Phase II: Theory
• Phase III: Application
• Phase IV: Case Studies

Together with presenting practice examples of OPTIMUM and MUDA

Afternoon

1. Practical Case Studies associated with OPTIMUM and MUDA.
2. Exercise associated with re-enforcing the morning’s OPTIMUM and MUDA theory

See Training Courses for price list and order form