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- Lean lists eight types of waste, and waiting is the one a machine measures most accurately.<\/li>\n
- Machines that wait rarely appear in the shift log because they do not look like a breakdown.<\/li>\n
- A short list of causes separates waiting for material, release or operator from technical failures.<\/li>\n
- Not every machine has to run: what matters is waiting at the value stream bottleneck.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<\/div>\n
What DIPS GmbH writes about waste<\/h2>\n
DIPS GmbH, a Vienna consultancy for digital transformation, processes and software development, published the article Lean Management: So reduzieren Unternehmen Verschwendung und verbessern den Wertstrom<\/a> (“Lean management: how companies reduce waste and improve the value stream”) on 14 August 2026. It explains the lean principles, how mid-sized companies can introduce lean through a pilot value stream, and how to assess the results with KPIs. The definition everything else rests on reads: “Verschwendung ist jede Aktivit\u00e4t, die Zeit, Kosten oder Kapazit\u00e4t beansprucht, ohne den Nutzen f\u00fcr den Kunden zu erh\u00f6hen.” (Waste is any activity that consumes time, cost or capacity without increasing the benefit for the customer.)<\/p><\/blockquote>\n
DIPS GmbH maps eight types of waste to examples from production and logistics and from administration and services. For waiting, the production example is material or a machine waiting for a release. The article also makes a point that matters for any measurement: OEE alone says little about a whole customer order, and high machine utilization can even worsen flow when it creates overproduction and inventory. This article adds the measurement side to the method: how do you make waiting at the machine visible without falling into the trap of simply maximizing utilization?<\/p>\n
Waiting runs in two directions: the material waits, the machine waits<\/h2>\n
In lean practice, waiting is usually seen from the material’s point of view: an order sits in front of a machine, a part waits for the next operation. That waiting shows up in inventory and lead time. The second direction is the machine that waits: it is ready to run, but it stands still because material is missing, the first-off approval is pending, no operator is available or maintenance has not arrived yet.<\/p>\n
In SMEs this second kind of waiting is often invisible. It rarely appears in the shift log because it does not look like a breakdown. Nobody did anything wrong, the machine just “waited a bit”. Over a week, though, those minutes add up, and instead of entering the analysis as waste they disappear into a vaguely lower output. This is where measuring at the machine helps: every stop has a start, an end and a duration, and once a cause is assigned, “the machine was down” becomes a specific waiting reason the team can discuss.<\/p>\n
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<\/figure>\nThe eight types of waste: what a machine measurement shows and what it does not<\/h2>\n
Measuring at the machine does not replace a waste analysis. It provides solid data for some types of waste, clues for others and nothing at all for some. The overview below helps set the right expectations.<\/p>\n