Waiting waste defined:

The act of doing nothing or working slowly while waiting for a work cycle to be completed.

Standing idle or marking time waiting for instruction, materials or information results in waiting waste.

You pay for all of the time your employees spend waiting. This time is not adding value, therefore, your customers are not going to want to pay for it. Waiting time will come directly from your profit and every bit you can save will go right back into your profit. Frequently, waiting time is made up with overtime at a premium rate. While this is good for your employees, it is not so good for your profit.

What Causes Waiting Waste?

Waste begins long before production starts and is not just limited to production. Managers, buyers and operations personnel should also be part of the focus of waste elimination.

A few of the causes of waiting waste:

  • Unbalanced processes in flow (one process takes longer than the next)
  • Unreliable processes (maintenance, quality issues, information, change-overs, etc.)
  • Overproduction and Inventory (waiting for material to be delivered to the next process)

IntelliFinishing takes a lot of pride in the Lean capabilities that our complete paint system for manufacturers is able to provide for our customers. No matter the size of your system, we offer you choices to eliminate waste in almost every area of production.

Here are just a few of the areas that an IntelliFinishing paint system (liquid or powder coating) can eliminate waiting waste:

  • No production gaps or empty hooks (employees aren’t waiting for parts)
  • Minimal (1% or less) unscheduled downtime decreases cost of employees waiting for production to resume
  • Recipes (process can be pre-programmed for incoming parts)
  • ERP integration and product scheduling allows operators to load parts quickly
  • Eliminate bottlenecks with independently controlled zones

Empty hooks and production gaps can be eliminated when you purchase our system that includes state-of-the-art technology. Your labor costs may also be reduced by minimizing the production gaps in your system. If your current system has line gaps or time intervals between hooks or carriers creating costly waiting waste, we invite you to contact us to discuss the options our systems can provide for your production pains.

There are many ways an automated industrial finishing system with the latest technology can help to promote a healthy bottom line. Our expandable paint system for industrial manufacturers could be the paint system that you didn’t know you were looking for!