In Lean Office, defining the waste termed Motion (also termed transportation) one can think of it as any and all unnecessary motion or movement that does not add value to the task at hand. 

It can be a result of poor office design, poor workflow, scattered supplies, walking, searching, and bending. It includes unnecessary movement of products, materials and people!  How often have you moved something in and out of storage, in and out of a document folder?  How much of the paper that you create and then file really needs to be created, let alone filed?  Where do you see multiple handoffs’ of information from one person to another and back again until a task is actually accomplished?

If you or others find yourself looking for items that are not kept in a defined space (again, digital or physical), sorting through materials, searching for files, not working to a standardized method, walking back and forth from the copy machine multiple times per day or up and down the stairs to locate commonly accessed supplies, you are likely suffering from a bit of lean office motion sickness.

I believe it’s also pretty safe to say that most all of us waste time and effort in the motion of accessing digital files, folders, documents, internet sites, contacts and appointment information. What are you going to do to target one area of wasted motion right now, write down a next action, or, it only takes a few moments, do it!  By the way you may be interested in Finding Digital Sanity.

 Photo Credit: Jellaluna