Day in and day out, you strive to improve efficiency because you know that improving efficiency saves time - time really is money. The more time you save, the more time you have for other productivity. Saving time means reducing costs. Reducing costs means more money in your pocket.

The Lean manufacturing approach embraces the concept of saving time. Look at the "seven types of deadly waste" - overproduction, waiting, transport, extra processing, inventory, motion and defects. More than half of them deal with wasted time. First is waiting. Its very name says it all. When parts or processes are in queue because of a downstream bottleneck, there is no value added. Waiting is nothing more than a waste of time.

Transport is another type of waste that is time-based. When you have to move parts or inventory from one place to another, it takes time. And it adds time to the overall process without adding value. You're also wasting resources in transport - either something very tangible like vehicles and fuel or less tangible like employee effort, and, you guessed it, employee time spent on transport.

Extra processing means extra effort and extra effort takes time. Time to re-process or time spent on an activity that does nothing to add value to the product is time wasted. Any unnecessary administrative activities, like monitoring inventory and overproduction, are time wasters.

Finally, motion, like transport, wastes time in addition to wasting effort. When you reduce motion, you automatically reduce the time spent executing it. So stop wasting time.

Time and money truly are directly proportionate. In fact, you can set your watch by it.