What are the 7 Wastes?

Not quite. When talking about waste, we have to keep in mind “what value does this create?” For example, a long walk between your car and your work’s front door can be “waste” or it can be a nice exercise and serve as a disconnect between work and play.

We have found a strong correlation between waste and stress. Through scientific research, we know that long periods of stress can lead to many personal health, relationship, and community consequences. For us, this is not a business question, but a moral one.

Some teach that there are 8 wastes, adding “waste of human potential” as the 8th waste. While we do think that wasting human potential is very wasteful, we categorize that as Defect waste.

Toyota discovered that there are 7 and it is a perfect number (notes in a scale, days in a week, color in a rainbow, etc.) so we don’t add to 7.

To go deeper on the 7 wastes, we recommend subscribing to kaaspass, our virtual subscription.