Prevention of waste is a core tenet of lean thinking, and has been systematically used to optimise processes of all types.
However, it is not universally useful.
Prevention of errors in an existing process is one thing, you have the process established, and can map the manner in which the process is applied, and the outcomes achieved. However, when dealing with a new product, or process, things are a little different.
There is no known path towards an outcome, you are in effect telling the future, and that is an occupation with a high failure rate.
In order to tell the future with anything approaching an acceptable level of certainty, you need to experiment, try things, see what works, ask customers, deploy the ‘Lean start-up’ type mentality to the development of the process.
This means there will be many false starts, errors, failures, or more accurately, opportunities to learn.
Established businesses often do not accept errors. Promotion, salary reviews, and all the other trappings of corporate success are usually based on not making mistakes, so guess what, nobody tries anything new that just might not work, just in case.
An effort to remove these errors will end up costing more, as the implication is that the product or process will be developed until it is seen as ‘Completed’ before launching. As we know, not all new products work, so the losses involved in such an exercise can be huge
Remember ‘New Coke,’ the new improved taste of new coke that nearly destroyed the brand? With the benefit of hindsight, it was obviously a dumb idea, but at the time, I am sure Coke management had market research coming out their ears that confirmed this was a great idea. Pity they did not pick a small test area, and put the change into the market, similar to a Minimum Viable Product, (MVP) to see what Coke consumers in real life rather than is some contrived market research environment said. Such a ‘waste’ would have saved them many millions of dollars, and being head of the queue in the greatest marketing blunder of all time list.
The lesson here is to encourage experimentation, each being an opportunity to learn, and improve your fortune telling skills, substituting small errors that do not compromise the business, for the big blunders that will.
