Discrete ManufacturingFree worksheetPDF, Excel, Word export

Lean 8 Wastes (Muda) Observation Log

Lean describes eight wastes: transport, inventory, motion, waiting, overproduction, overprocessing, defects and unused talent. This log turns a waste walk into a ranked list with a rough cost so the team can choose where to start.

Download:

Date	Area or cell	Waste type	What was observed	Minutes per occurrence (min)	Occurrences per day	Minutes lost per day (min)	Cost per minute	Cost per day
						84		$92
						100		$70
						100		$80
						72		$72
						27		$19

Total minutes lost per day

383 min

Total cost per day

$333

Annualized cost (250 working days)

$83,325

Hours lost per year

1,596 hrs

Estimates are for ranking, not accounting. Cost per minute should be a loaded labor or machine rate from your finance team. Sort by cost per day after export.

Check floor waste against ERP data

Optional review of whether scrap, move and queue data support your waste walk findings.

Optional. The tool and every export work without this. No spam.

How to use the log

Walk the area with the supervisor and operators and write down every waste you see as its own row. Choose the waste type, describe it in plain words, estimate the minutes each time and how many times a day it happens. Enter a cost per minute for the resource wasting time. The log computes minutes and cost per day and sums them. Repeat the walk in different shifts, because night shift waste often differs from day shift.

Describe the observation, not a person
Use ranges honestly and enter the conservative number
Sort by daily cost after exporting to Excel

The eight wastes

Transport is unneeded movement of material. Inventory is any stock beyond what the process needs. Motion is unneeded movement of people. Waiting is idle time for people or machines. Overproduction is making more or earlier than demanded and is often called the worst waste because it causes others. Overprocessing is more work than the customer values. Defects mean scrap and rework. Unused talent is not using people's ideas and skills. Mixing categories is fine at first; pick the one that best points to the fix.

Reading the result

The annualized cost multiplies daily cost by 250 working days, which you can adjust by editing the data. It tells you which wastes deserve a project and which can be fixed with a 5S or a small kaizen. Be careful not to count the same loss twice, for example waiting caused by defects. Link the top three rows to action owners and review progress in the daily huddle.

Frequently Asked Questions

Are there seven or eight wastes?

The original Toyota list has seven wastes. Many lean teams add an eighth, unused talent or skills, so you will see both lists. This log includes eight and you can ignore the last if your organization uses seven.

How accurate do the minutes need to be?

Accurate enough to rank. A rough estimate with a consistent method is more useful than a precise number on only one item. Time a few occurrences with a stopwatch when a row looks like a top item.

What cost per minute should I use?

Use a loaded labor rate for people waiting or searching, or a machine hour rate for machine waiting. Your finance team can give you both. For defects, include material and the labor of the rework.

How often should we do a waste walk?

Weekly in one area works well, rotating through the plant. Short, frequent walks find more than a single annual event and build the habit of seeing waste.

Netray can help find the same waste patterns in ERP data, such as repeated moves, scrap postings and late-job queues, to confirm what the walk found.

Talk to an Expert Explore More Free Tools

Related Tools

Quality & Inspection

More Discrete Manufacturing tools

See all

Back to All Tools