In Hard Economic Times It's Important To Remove Waste From Business

Many businesses generate losses daily because they are not being attentive to the wastes that are all around them.  These are simple to ignore, but end up costing you money in the long run.  Wastes come in all size and shapes, however in the end, they all do damage.  Some just do the damage a little faster than others.  Even though there are various kinds of wastes, each one comes down to one thing-you losing money. 
It does not matter if you're losing money on the front end or the back end, or if you are losing money in labor or materials, the point is that you are losing it someplace. The trick or the opportunity is to detect the waste before it gets out of hand and then fix the problem.  How do you spot waste?  All you need to do is look around. Waste is all around us, from the process used to make those parts you're selling, to the additional labor that is standing idle because the machine is damaged, waste is always around. 
You need to be able to minimize the waste.  One of the primary areas of waste is downtime.  This can be while a machine is being serviced or if it's just down for routine maintenance.  But if it is down for routine maintenance, then there needs to be a backup plan so that the waste is nominal.  These types of things should be scheduled well in advance and at convenient times when they will do the least amount of damage to production. 
If a machine is broken or there is an emergency, there should be a contingency plan in place.  This means that there needs to be parts prepared to go or at least a plan to move forward towards correcting the problem.  All of these plans should be known by everyone involved and if there are a number of plants, with the same types of machines, then the plans should be uniform and the same in all locations. 
Having standardized practices for emergencies and processes is a must in order to have them run smoothly and to keep things advancing.  This way, the training is all standardized and each plant knows precisely how to respond when a certain situation comes up, no matter what location it takes place.  These plans should be written down with clear, concise steps and everyone involved should know them.