The 8 Wastes in Higher Education Infographic

The 8 Wastes in Higher Education Infographic

When most people think of Business Improvement and Lean Six Sigma they tend to think about manufacturing, particularly companies such as Motorola, Toyota and GE. However, in the past decade businesses across every industry sector have increasing been considering how process improvement can help them transform their organisation for the better. Indeed, as all organisations, regardless of what they actually do, have processes they should all benefit from process improvement. While the private sector has been benefiting from these methods for some time, the public sector and academic institutions have only recently begun to realise the potential power. The 8 Wastes in Higher Education Infographic takes a look at how they might manifest in a university.

Administrative Staff

1. Overprocessing: Completing reports that are no longer necessary or in a lecel of detail no longer required.
2. Transport: Handing off the work between several people in order to complete a task.
3. Motion: Walking to and from poorly located office machines or meeting rooms.
4. Overproduction: Having to process a large number of applications, loan forms and graduate results all at once.
5. Employees: Not using staff to the best of their abilities due to ignorance of skills or time pressures.
6. Defects/Rework: Inability to process admissions due to missing or incorrect information.
7. Inventoy: Printing new prochures prospectuses every year, and throwing out old copies, when much of the information remains the same.
8. Waiting: Waiting for decisions to be approved.

Academic Staff

1. Motion: Walking to deliver lectures and seminars in different areas or buildings during the same teaching day.
2. Overproduction: Requiring all faculty to satisfy standard teaching, research or service workload expectations regardless of whether the work is needed.
3. Inventory: Not enough space to satisfy demand for classes at peak times, and too much at other times.
4. Waiting: for students to arrive for their lecture or meeting, or to submit work.
5. Defects/Rework: Failing to inform staff of new or changed policies in time for them to be observed.
6. Overprocessing: Creating memos, presentations and reports from scratch instead of using a standard template.
7. Transport: Taking coursework home in order to mark it.
8. Employees: High-level staff completing simple tasks such as proofreading.

Students

1. Inventory: The library only stocking a handful of a much in-demand book leading to waiting lists and students struggling with assignments.
2. Overproduction: All new students for the year must enroll in a single time period, causing long queues and mistakes.
3. Overprocessing: Having to hand in an electronic and paper copy of assignments in-person and submit a copy online too.
4. Employees: Teaching all students at the same level regardless of personal strengths.
5. Motion: Scheduling classes for a single course in widely separated locations.
6. Defects/Rework: Unclear requirements for assignments from day one mean that work must be re-done before submission.
7. Transport: Carrying around USB sticks or using cloud storage to transport work to and from university.
8. Waiting: Waiting for results/for a lecture to start/for equipment to be returned.