Foundations

Eight wastes (DOWNTIME) worksheet

Eight wastes (DOWNTIME) worksheet is licensed CC BY 4.0. Attribution: Katafacts (katafacts.com).

1 · What it is

What it is

The eight wastes (DOWNTIME) worksheet is how a waste walk actually gets recorded: real observations, each tagged to one of eight standard categories, tallied so the vital few waste types stand out instead of a wall of anecdotes. DOWNTIME is Defects, Overproduction, Waiting, Non-utilized talent, Transportation, Inventory, Motion, Extra-processing — the classic seven wastes plus the eighth Toyota added later, unused talent, which office and knowledge work tends to underweight even though it's often the largest one. A category with zero observations logged is flagged honestly rather than hidden — it either means that waste genuinely isn't present, or it means nobody actually looked for it yet, and the worksheet says so rather than pretending the two are the same thing.

2 · When to use it

When to use it — and when not to

Use it when

You're walking a real process — shop floor or office — and want to record what you actually see, tagged consistently, instead of a running list of complaints.
You want an honest tally showing which waste category actually dominates, not a gut feeling about what's probably the biggest problem.
You're kicking off a kaizen event or a Transactional Process Improvement (TPI) review and need real evidence of where the waste is before committing to what to fix.

Not when

You already know exactly what to fix and just need to plan the countermeasure — go straight to an implementation plan or A3; this worksheet is for finding the problem, not solving it.
You're tempted to fill in every category just to look thorough — an honestly sparse worksheet, concentrated in the categories that actually apply, is more useful than a padded one.
You haven't actually walked the process yet — this tool structures real observations, it doesn't generate plausible-sounding waste from a description alone.

3 · How to fill it in

How to fill it in

Observations: Describe the process and what you actually saw — a first-pass set of tagged observations gets drafted from that, for you to correct against what you really observed on the walk.
Coverage: Computed for you from your observations — nothing to enter here.
Narrative: Drafted from the worksheet actually built.
Next steps: What will you do about the top waste category or a high-impact observation, ranked by impact and effort, owned and dated.

4 · What good looks like

What good looks like

The example below walks Meridian Business Services' vendor invoice approval process: seven real observations concentrated in Waiting and Extra-processing, with Overproduction and Transportation honestly left at zero because this all-digital process genuinely doesn't produce either.

Same example, as a downloadable xlsx workbook.

Download .xlsx

Eight wastes worksheet · Vendor invoice approval

Meridian Business Services — vendor invoice approval waste walk

Priya Anand, AP Supervisor · 2027-03-04

Team: Sofia Chen, AP Clerk · Sponsor: Renee Okafor, Controller

Observations

Invoices sit untouched in a shared inbox for 2-3 days before anyone actually picks them up.
High impact
Waiting · Invoice receipt · Every invoice
Department approvers let invoices sit near month-end, buried under other approval requests.
Waiting · Department approval · Last week of every month
AP re-keys invoice line items into the ERP by hand, even though the vendor portal already has the same data in a structured export.
High impact
Extra-processing · Data entry · Every invoice
Idea: Pull the vendor portal's structured export directly into the ERP instead of re-typing it.
About 1 in 8 invoices gets kicked back for a missing PO number and restarts the approval chain from the top.
Defects · Three-way match · ~12% of invoices
AP clerk walks to the Finance Manager's office to get a physical signature on any invoice over $10k.
Motion · Finance sign-off · 2-3 times a week
The AP supervisor, who ran process-improvement projects at her last job, spends most of her week doing manual three-way matching instead.
Non-utilized talent · Three-way match · Ongoing
Idea: Automate matching for POs under a set dollar threshold; free her up for exception handling and the process work she's actually skilled at.
A standing backlog of 40-60 invoices sits in the 'pending approval' queue at any given time — work-in-process nobody's actively moving.
Inventory · Approval queue · Ongoing, ~40-60 at any time

Coverage

Observations

Top category

Waiting

Zero-observation categories

Defects

1 (0 high)

Overproduction

0 (0 high)

Waiting

2 (1 high)

Non-utilized talent

1 (0 high)

Transportation

0 (0 high)

Inventory

1 (0 high)

Motion

1 (0 high)

Extra-processing

1 (1 high)

No observations logged

Overproduction, Transportation

Narrative

The waste walk found real, specific waste concentrated in a few categories rather than spread thin across all eight — Waiting shows up twice, at both invoice intake and department approval, and Extra-processing's manual re-keying is a high-impact finding on its own. Two categories, Overproduction and Transportation, genuinely turned up nothing: this is an all-digital approval chain with no physical item moving and no excess output being produced, not a gap in the walk itself. Non-utilized talent is worth calling out specifically — a supervisor with real process-improvement experience is spending most of her week on matching work a threshold-based automation could largely absorb.

Next steps

Pull the vendor portal's structured data export directly into the ERP instead of re-keying it by hand.
AP re-keys invoice line items by hand even though a structured export already exists — Extra-processing, high impact · Impact: high · Effort: medium · Priya Anand · 2027-04-15
Set an SLA for picking invoices out of the shared inbox and route them automatically instead of leaving them for someone to notice.
Invoices sit untouched for 2-3 days before intake — Waiting, high impact · Impact: high · Effort: low · Sofia Chen · 2027-03-25
Scope an automated three-way match for POs under a set dollar threshold, freeing the AP supervisor for exception handling and real process work.
AP supervisor spends most of her week on manual matching instead of the process-improvement work she's actually skilled at — Non-utilized talent · Impact: medium · Effort: high · Priya Anand · 2027-05-01

5 · Common mistakes

Common mistakes

Padding the worksheet to fill every category.
A waste walk that finds real waste in three categories and honestly nothing in the other five is more useful than one that manufactures a plausible-sounding entry for every category — the empty categories are real information.
Logging a generic complaint instead of a specific observation.
"The process is slow" isn't a DOWNTIME observation — "invoices sit in the inbox for 2-3 days before anyone picks them up" is. A vague entry can't actually be acted on.
Underusing Non-utilized talent.
It's the easiest of the eight to skip — skilled people doing routine work below their capability rarely gets logged as "waste" the way a literal delay does, even though it's often the most expensive one.

6 · What it connects to

What it connects to

upstream

downstream

Swimlane process map
Once waste is identified by category, a swimlane map shows exactly where in the process — and whose lane — each one actually lives.
Value stream mapping
A waste walk's findings are often the raw material a value stream map's current-state analysis draws on to compute where the flow is actually choked.
Kaizen event charter
A concentrated cluster of high-impact waste in one category is exactly the kind of finding that justifies chartering a real kaizen event, not just a next-steps list.

7 · Where AI helps

Where AI helps

Judgement — stays yours

Deciding whether an observation is really waste or a defensible part of the process
Deciding which category or observation to act on first

Analysis — AI helps

Drafting a first-pass set of tagged observations from a description of the process and what was seen
Drafting the narrative from the worksheet actually built

Drudgery — automated

Tallying observations by category, including which categories have zero
Flagging high-impact observations within each category
Exporting to xlsx in the house format

9 · Rate this kata