Summary

For the 6th episode, I am posting the final part of a 5 part video course, called W.A.S.T.E. Walks.

This episode summarizes the Walk process, to help you organize and conduct a successful W.A.S.T.E. Walk.

You can view the video version of this course for free by contacting us, so we can send you the free coupon code for the video course.

The following episode will summarize the walk process used to plan, conduct, combine ideas and decide on actions to implement.

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Transcript

Now that you’ve completed the WASTE walk, and you’ve gathered all the team members back together, what’s next?

Now that you have completed the WASTE walk event, let’s move into the Combine phase of our Walk process

We will be collecting the ideas and opportunities we observed and recorded, and we will group similar ideas together, so that we have a condensed list of actions.

The deliverable for this phase will be an affinity diagram.

Gather all the team members together and have them write their ideas and opportunities on a post-it note (preferably ones made from recycled paper). Place them on a whiteboard or large “butcher” paper that can be hung on the wall.

As items get placed on the board, have the person read off their idea to the group. This will encourage brainstorming of other ideas from the team, or remind people what they observed.

Once all the team members have added their ideas and there are no other brainstormed ideas, the next step is to group very similar ideas together into one idea (which removes duplication).

After all ideas have been reviewed and combined where applicable, have the team go to the board (a few at a time), and combine the ideas into similar groups and categories.

When all ideas are grouped together, the team members should assign a name or label to the groupings, that best reflects what ideas are contained within. It’s preferred to have the team create the categories, instead of having pre-defined categories. This is called an Affinity Diagram.

After categories are labeled, additional brainstorming can occur based on the category names.

The goal is to come up with a final list of ideas that will get prioritized and voted on.

The last phase of the Walk process is Decide, where we place the ideas onto an assessment matrix, and then vote on the top 3 ideas.

The deliverables from this phase will be an Impact-Ease Matrix, and the top 3 actions based on the results of the multivoting exercise.

In the Decide phase, we take the list of ideas and rank them as a team, based on the impact of the idea on reducing the particular waste, and the ease of implementation.

Impact should be based on estimates of data collected during the WASTE walk, or from expert opinions. If that is not available, then the team will estimate the impact.

This will eventually require additional data collection and monitoring to get more concrete numbers. However, that can be fine-tuned during the next step of this phase, when the team decides on the top 3.

To assess the ease of implementation, the team should consider the cost of the idea, along with any behavior change required to implement the idea.

Let’s take a look at the ideas from a Water Walk as an example. If shutting off a valve is easy to do at the end of each shift, and there is no additional cost to implement, then the implementation will be easy.  If the idea requires an expensive upgrade to the equipment, and it will take multiple steps in the software to complete the shut off,...