Smart Lean: Eliminating Waste with AI
Explore How AI Enhances Lean Thinking Across the 8 Wastes in Service Operations
While Lean was born in manufacturing, this series explores its next evolution: eliminating waste (Muda) in digital, customer-facing, and knowledge-based service operations where AI makes the biggest impact.
From overproduction to underutilized talent, these inefficiencies increase costs, slow down workflows, and erode customer experience. In this deep dive, I’ll show shows how Artificial Intelligence, when applied with Lean discipline, can identify and eliminate these wastes across service environments.
The goal isn’t just automation, it’s operational precision, adaptability, and meaningful value creation at every touchpoint.
The 8 Lean Wastes in Services
Overproduction
Delivering a service or information before it is needed, or producing more than is required (e.g., sending follow-up emails too early, preparing reports no one reads).
Transport
Unnecessary digital or physical movement of work between people, departments, or systems often involving rework or duplication (e.g., emails sent back and forth, re-entering data).
Motion
Excessive or inefficient movement within a role or system such as scrolling, searching, navigating screens, or switching between apps (e.g., toggling screens, clicking through folders).
Waiting
Delays in service processes due to idle time, handoffs, system lags, or approvals (e.g., customers waiting on hold, employees waiting for supervisor sign-off).
Overprocessing (Coming Soon)
Doing more work than necessary or adding complexity without adding value (e.g., excessive approvals, redundant data validation, overly complex reports).
Defects (Coming Soon)
Errors, rework, or corrections due to poor communication, wrong information, or lack of standardization (e.g., data entry mistakes, incorrect invoices, misrouted calls).
Underutilized Talent (Coming Soon)
Not leveraging employees’ skills, creativity, or problem-solving potential (e.g., using highly trained staff for low-value tasks, lack of empowerment).
Inventory (Coming Soon)
Accumulation of unprocessed work, documents, or digital queues (e.g., backlog of customer service tickets, unread emails, reports piling up).
