Product Waste

What is product waste?

Product waste may refer to physical waste, like over-ordering stock that sits on a shelf for years. For digital products, though, waste may refer to investing time and money into releasing features nobody wants or uses. 

Types of product waste

There are two main types of product waste: manufacturing product waste, which comes with making physical products, and product development and process waste, which is more associated with developing digital products. 

Manufacturing product waste

• Overproduction waste - Producing more components or products than can realistically be used. 

• Waste of waiting/idle time - This refers to time wasted while waiting for equipment repairs, employees waiting for guidance or task assignments, or products waiting to be delivered. 

• Transportation waste - This includes taking inefficient routes to transport goods, wasting time and fuel, or moving products from one storage location to another when it’s not essential. 

• Over-processing waste - This happens when a manufacturing company spends more time, resources, and money on products or components than necessary. 

• Inventory waste - Ordering too much stock that will remain unused for a long time, by accident or design, is one example of inventory waste. 

• Motion waste - This includes excessive movement of equipment or people, like having multiple employees working a machine that only requires one person.

• Defects and quality control waste - Defects and quality issues (like missing components or incorrect construction) often relate to other types of waste (e.g., overprocessing and transportation). 

Product development and process waste

• Handoffs - Handing material over to other teams or individuals can be wasteful due to misunderstandings or feedback delays. This can affect productivity and cause further waste down the line. 

• Waiting - In product management, a lot of time gets wasted while waiting for decisions to be made, features to get the go-ahead, and developers to complete tasks. 

• Overdoing - This includes putting more time and effort into generating data that doesn’t translate into value. 

• Rework - Rework includes completing the same tasks repeatedly, like fixing issues that should have been addressed on the first pass. 

• Stop-and-go jobs — This includes when an employee has to reorient to work on a specific task or job, which can slow productivity. 

• Misused talent - This includes assigning workers to take on tasks that bring no value to customers or end users, such as refining features that few people are likely to use. 

• Reinvention - Reinvention waste happens by wasting time and resources on research already completed externally. This might be researching customer behaviors that have been covered in detail elsewhere. 

How to identify waste in the product management process

Identifying waste in the product management process and minimizing it is crucial to optimizing productivity, efficiency, and results. 

Start by assessing your current processes and pinpoint where waste happens. You can try consulting employees from various departments and discussing what they consider wasteful. Bringing different perspectives and workplace experiences to the table can reveal instances of waste that may otherwise go unnoticed. 

Another technique is to compare investment in resources with overall output to determine how much value those investments have overall. You may be able to eliminate overspending in certain areas and invest the excess in other areas that offer more value. 

Work out how much different types of waste cost your organization, on average, within a year. That might be due to fixing mistakes that should have been caught before release, for example, or waiting longer than necessary for answers from C-suite execs.

Strategies and methodologies to minimize waste

Here are just a few strategies and methodologies to help you minimize waste in your product management process.

Strategies

• Determine customer value through interviews, surveys, and personas to understand the most important features.

• Reduce wait times by removing unnecessary steps and improving collaboration. 

• Build knowledge hubs or bases to avoid rework or reinvention.

• Assess how you use talent and adjust processes to maximize their skills wherever necessary. 

• Remove defects to avoid waste related to refunds, replacements, and reputation damage. 

Methodologies

• Adopting lean product development to save money and resources by streamlining the entire process. 

• Embracing agile methodologies that help product teams learn from mistakes and adapt instead of sticking to the same routines even if they don’t work. 

• Using Kanban boards to track workflows and stay on target with simple drag-and-drop functionality.

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