Small inefficiencies are easy to dismiss. One extra piece of paper, one unnecessary approval, one duplicate report or one additional click hardly seems worth worrying about. But frequency changes everything. When a small inefficiency is repeated thousands or millions of times, it becomes significant.
Worse, efforts to improve efficiency can simply move waste somewhere else. A cheaper paper towel might mean people use two instead of one. A faster process in one department might create more work for another. A lower purchasing cost might lead to more failures or replacements. True operational excellence isn’t about making individual activities cheaper or faster. It’s about improving the whole system and creating more value. The question isn’t simply “What did we save?” It’s “Where did the waste go?”
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