What is transportation waste?
Transportation waste is moving material, parts or information more than the work needs. Each move uses time and people, and risks dents and damage. The customer pays for what the part becomes, not for the distance it travels inside your factory.
Walk into most plants and you will see trolleys, forklifts and hand carts always on the move. It looks like activity. But the moving is not the work.
Is transportation the same as motion?
No. Transportation is the movement of material. Motion is the movement of the person. A forklift carrying a crate is transportation. An operator walking to the tool room is motion. They often come together, but we fix them differently. Motion has its own article in this series.
Where does it hide?
In the shop
- Parts carried between a turning shed, a milling shed and a grinding shed.
- Raw material stored far from the machines that use it.
- Double handling: store → floor → back to store → floor.
- A forklift shifting the same crate three times to reach the one behind it.
In the office
- A file carried from desk to desk for signatures.
- Information passed through three people before it reaches the one who needs it.
- An order copied by hand between two departments.
What does it cost? An example
Follow one batch of shafts through a plant:
Store → Saw → Turning shed → Milling shed → Grinding shed → Inspection → Dispatch.
That is six moves and about 250 metres for every batch. Each move takes about 15 minutes: find a trolley, load, move, unload.
- Handling per batch: 6 × 15 = 90 minutes.
- Last month, some parts were dented during handling and had to be reworked.
(These numbers are an example.) The plant then placed the three machines next to each other in the order of the work. The route fell to about 15 metres and most of the handling went away.
Draw the route once, and the waste draws itself.
How do we see it? A route drawing
The best tool is simple and free. Take a copy of your factory layout. Choose one product. Follow it from raw material to dispatch and draw its path with a pen.
- Each line is a move.
- Each crossing is a place of congestion.
- A tangle of lines shows waste at once.
This is often called a spaghetti diagram, because the lines look like a plate of spaghetti. Show it to the team. Nobody needs a long explanation.
Why does it happen?
- Layout by machine type. All lathes in one place, all mills in another, instead of in the order of the work.
- Storage far from the point of use.
- Large batches that need a forklift instead of a hand trolley.
- No fixed place for material. It is moved around to make room.
- Growth without planning. A shed was added when it was needed, not where the flow wanted it.
How do we reduce it?
- Place machines in the order of the work. Group them into a cell for one product family.
- Store at the point of use. Keep only today's need beside the machine.
- Move smaller lots on simple trolleys.
- Give every material a fixed place, so no one moves it to make space.
- Cut paper movement. Let one person fill the form and pass it with the job, instead of sending it round the offices.
If you cannot move machines, move the stores, or use a better route first. Small changes often give much of the benefit.
When you study movement, watch the process, not the person. The aim is to improve the layout, not to find fault.
How to start in your plant
- Pick one product that passes through three or more areas.
- Draw its route on the layout and count the moves.
- Measure the distance and the time for one batch.
- Ask: which move can go, which can be shorter, which can be combined?
- Try one change for a month and draw the route again.
Key points
- Transportation waste is moving material or information more than needed.
- Customers do not pay for the distance a part travels in your plant.
- Draw the route of one part to see the waste at once.
- Layout by order of work, material at point of use and fixed places cut the moves.
- Transportation is material movement; motion is the movement of people.
