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The 8 Wastes of Lean: Identify and Eliminate Process Waste
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6,223 students
The 8 Wastes of Lean: Identify and Eliminate Process Waste
Find transport, inventory, motion, waiting, overproduction, overprocessing, defects and skills wastes in any workflow
Last updated 8/2026
English
English [Auto],
What you'll learn
- Recognise all eight Lean wastes in service, office and operational processes.
- Use process observation and mapping to locate waste within a workflow.
- Assess how waste affects time, quality, cost, flow and customer value.
- Distinguish root causes of waste from visible symptoms and isolated examples.
- Prioritise waste-reduction opportunities and identify proportionate countermeasures.
- Produce an end-to-end waste analysis that colleagues can understand and act upon.
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Course content
6 sections • 28 lectures • 2h 40m total length
Requirements
- No previous Lean or process-improvement knowledge is required.
- You may bring a real business process to examine during the practical activities.
- Standard office or process-mapping tools are sufficient.
Description
Waste hides in delays, rework, hand-offs, excess movement, unused capability and work customers do not value. This course teaches you how to recognise the eight Lean wastes, map where they occur and convert the findings into a focused improvement plan.
You will examine transport, inventory, motion, waiting, overproduction, overprocessing, defects and unused skills. For each waste, the course explains what it looks like, why it occurs and how it can appear in service, office, digital and operational processes as well as traditional production environments.
The course then moves from recognition to analysis. You will learn how to observe a process, use a process map to make waste visible and gather evidence about its effect on time, quality, cost and customer value. Realistic examples show how several wastes can interact and why removing one symptom without understanding the wider workflow may simply move the problem elsewhere.
Practical demonstrations and exercises help you prioritise opportunities and identify proportionate countermeasures. You will also consider how to involve colleagues and build waste identification into everyday improvement rather than treating it as a one-off exercise.
By the end of the course, you will be able to complete an end-to-end eight-wastes analysis, explain the evidence and recommend targeted actions that improve flow and operational performance.
Who this course is for:
- Operations managers and process owners seeking to reduce delay and rework.
- Lean and continuous-improvement practitioners developing practical analysis skills.
- Business analysts mapping workflows and identifying performance opportunities.
- Team leaders who want colleagues to recognise and remove waste in daily work.