Non Value-Added - Why am I doing this again?

Great question! If something isn’t adding value to your product, you should stop doing it! It’s simple in concept, but that doesn’t mean it’s easy. Non-Value Added (NVA) activities can be hard to extract from legacy processes, and it can be easy for them to sneak in little by little as you build up a manufacturing line. To eliminate them, it’s helpful what to define what value-added is, and what it isn’t.

#Value-Added Work

Any work or processes that transforms raw material, making it more valuable than it was in the prior step. This includes machining, forming, printing, coating, assembly - any manufacturing process that physically transforms your product or enables it to function.

#Non Value-Added

The inverse of the above - any work or process that does not transform raw material into your product or enable it to function. These show up explicitly in 4 of the 7 Wastes - waiting, motion, transportation, and over processing are all non value-added activities. If you find them when you are doing a cycle time analysis, line balancing activity, spaghetti map, or anything else, it’s your job to get rid of them. If it’s being done because “that’s the way we’ve always done it” and you can’t find a better answer, chances are that there was either never a good answer in the first place, or there was but things have since changed, rendering this activity useless.

#Non Value-Added, but Necessary

As the name implies, these are things that don’t add value to the product, but if you don’t do them you’ll run into trouble. Examples could be a morning stand-up meeting, changeovers, or equipment maintenance. The team isn’t actively building and creating value in with these actions, but if not done problems will quickly ensue. Another classic example is inspection, this can be counter-intuitive to understand - “If I let a defect through the customer won’t be getting value! I have to inspect!” - but is exactly as the name implies. It is a non-value added activity - you don’t inspect quality into a product, and the act of inspecting it doesn’t change it from a good product to bad (or vice versa). It was already good or bad, you are just identifying that fact through inspection. However, it’s necessary because if you don’t do it, defects will get to your customers, causing dissatisfaction and driving up warranty claims and chasing away customers. While activities like this may be required, you should still look at them and figure out what has to be true for them to no longer be necessary. Long inspection processes at the end of the line? Build quality into the process using tools like mistake-proofing, statistical process control, and quicker in-line inspection and rectification. Taking a lot of time in alignment meetings? Find ways to focus meetings on problem-solving, and push general information sharing out through other less intensive channels like messaging and email to reduce the total overhead. It will take some creativity to do so, but taking the time to eliminate these activities will pay dividends for your team.

#In summary

• Value-Added work: this is how you create value. Work to do so efficiently and with high quality, and you can only eliminate this by changing the product or by finding some other value-added process that is more efficient and productive that can replace it.
• Non Value-Added work: this is pure waste and should be eliminated as quickly as possible once identified.
• Non Value-Added but necessary work: things like inspection don’t add value, but they are protecting your customers. Work to identify them, and then define ways to reduce them wherever possible, which may require upstream improvements or other longer-term projects.