Defects are one of the seven wastes of lean

manufacturing or 7 mudas, defects are when

products or service deviate from what the customer
requires or the specification. When you talk about
waste most people think of defects rather than the
other wastes such as waiting and transportation.
The Waste of Defects

Defects can be caused by many different problems,
many that should be avoidable with a little thought
when designing your products, processes and
equipment.
Many defects are caused by incorrect method due to
non-standard operations, differences in the way that
processes are undertaken by different operators on
different shifts.
Causes of the Waste of
Defects.

Scrap produced by poorly maintained fixtures.
Parts assembled with the incorrect orientation.
Missing screws and other fixing due to lack of controls.
Incorrect components used due to incorrect, or missing
instructions.
Poorly made components that continued to be made as
the employees wanted to reach their performance bonus.
Parts damaged due to excessive handling.
Faulty parts that have reached the customer.
Examples of wastes of
Defects

There are many techniques out there to help you to
identify and eliminate wastes; however within lean
manufacturing we wish to prevent them occurring in
the first place.
This prevention of defects is achieved by a number
of different techniques from autonomation / Jidoka
(Machines with human intelligence that are able to
detect when a non standard event has occurred)
through to Pokayoke devices that detect if a product
is defective, either preventing the process from
running or highlighting the defect for action.
How to eliminate or
reduce Defects