For those working in quality or regulatory environments, waste is a mortal enemy. The Japanese call it muda, which in my own oddly mnemonic fashion I’ve always associated with mud slung into high-speed gearing or splattered all over clean rooms. It’s the opposite of smooth, efficient operations.

Muda can take many pernicious and persistent forms. Take the processes used in lean projects or for maintaining an ISO 9001-compliant quality management system, for example. Many of the ISO-compliance processes are intricately linked to the processes required for proper management of a lean enterprise. ISO 9001 requires that management establish and monitor a quality system based on customer requirements to create suitable products and services. Operationally, fulfilling these requirements is hardly possible without tactical approaches such as gemba walks, just-in-time production systems, or kaizen projects—the same methods used in lean.

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