KaizenProof

Lesson 6 of 23 · 6 min read

Should this step exist? Remove it before you improve or automate it

In Lean: remove before you improve or automate

Builds on: Your work is a process, and the customer decides what is value, Asking why until you reach something you can change

In one minute

Before you make a step faster or automate it, ask whether it should exist at all. A step that adds no value does not become valuable by being automated; it becomes waste that runs faster and is harder to see. Test the step against value: who uses its output, what would happen if it stopped, and is it really required? Remove first, then simplify, and automate only what remains.

The idea

Once you know the cause of a friction, the tempting next move is to speed things up: a reminder, a script, a workflow tool. Sometimes that is right. Often, though, the step being sped up should not be there at all. Automating it locks the waste into a system, where it needs maintaining and becomes even harder to question, because "the tool does it".

The test builds on value from lesson 2. Ask four questions about the step:

  1. Who uses what this step produces? Name the person and what they do with it. If you cannot, that is a strong signal.
  2. What would happen if it stopped? Be specific. "Something might go wrong" is not an answer; "a payment to a fake supplier could go through" is.
  3. Has it ever changed the outcome? An approval that has never refused anything, or a check that has never found anything, is not doing the job it exists for. Rare results can still matter: a fraud check that seldom fires may be worth keeping. Ask what it protects against, and whether that risk is real.
  4. Is it really required, and by what? "Audit needs it" is often a memory, not a fact. Find the actual rule. It may ask for a review rather than a check of every item, or it may no longer apply.

Then work in this order. Remove the step if it fails the test. If it must stay, simplify it or combine it with another step: a threshold, a sample instead of every item, one approval instead of three. Automate only what is left, once it is as small as it can be. Lesson 13 goes further into this order.

Eliminate before you automateAsk whether the step should exist before you make it faster. Automating a step nobody needs makes the wrong work faster.
Should this step exist? A decision flowA decision flow in order. First question: should this step exist at all? If no, remove it: the best outcome, with nothing left to run. If yes, second question: can it be combined, reordered or made lighter? If yes, simplify it, then go on. Third question: is what is left stable and repeated? If no, keep it by hand and write a standard. If yes, automate it. The order is remove, then simplify, then automate.Should this stepexist at all?No1. Remove itnothing left to runYesCan it be combined,reordered or lighter?Yes2. Simplify itNoIs what is left stableand repeated?NoKeep it by hand;write a standardYes3. Automate it
  • “Audit needs it” is often a memory, not a fact. Find the actual rule before you keep a step for it.
  • Removing a step is a small, reversible trial: agree it with whoever owns the step and whoever receives the work.

Removing a step is a change like any other, so treat it as a small, reversible trial. Agree it with whoever owns the step and whoever receives its output, stop for a set period, and watch whether anyone misses it. Removing a step is never a judgement on the people who did it. They did what the process asked of them.

Example

Illustrative example, not a real company.

In a finance team, every expense claim is approved by the employee's manager and then checked line by line by finance against each receipt, down to the smallest. The team proposes a tool that reads receipts automatically, to speed up the line check.

Before buying anything, they test the step. The line check rarely finds anything the manager's approval missed, and when it does, the amount is small. The expense policy, once they read it, asks for claims to be reviewed, not for every line of every claim to be checked. So they propose a change, agreed with the finance controller as a trial: claims below a set amount are no longer checked line by line; finance reviews a sample of them each month and keeps the full check for larger claims.

The automation question has not gone away, but it now applies to a much smaller step, and it may no longer be worth it.

Common mistakes

  • Automating first. A faster version of a pointless step is still pointless, and now there is a system to maintain.
  • Assuming a step is required. Find the actual rule before deciding; requirements are often narrower than the habits built on them.
  • Removing a control quietly. Agree the change with the step's owner and its receivers, and run it as a reversible trial.

Words to know

  • Should this step exist? (in Lean: eliminate before you improve or automate): the question asked before making any step faster.
  • Remove the step first (in Lean: eliminate, the first letter of ECRS: eliminate, combine, rearrange, simplify).
  • Needed for now (in Lean: necessary non-value-adding): required by a real rule, so kept, as light as the rule allows.

Check your understanding

3 questions. Answer them all, then check. You can try again as often as you like; nothing about your attempts is kept.

Question 1 of 3HR emails a weekly absence summary to all managers. Asked, the managers say they check absences in the HR system instead. HR wants to automate the summary. What should it do first?
Question 2 of 3Which findings suggest a step may not need to exist? Select all that apply.

Choose all that apply.

Question 3 of 3You want to improve a step. Put these in the order to consider them.

Put the steps in order, first at the top. Use the Up and Down buttons.

  1. Position 1: Automate what remains.
  2. Position 2: Remove the step if it fails that test.
  3. Position 3: Simplify or combine what has to stay.
  4. Position 4: Find out who uses its output and what it protects against.

Loading…

Try it on your own work

Describe one recurring task that wastes your time, and see these ideas applied to it.

Report a friction (opens in a new tab)

Where this comes from

Questioning whether a step is needed before improving it comes from the work-simplification methods that fed into the Lean tradition, where removing waste comes before making the remaining work faster.