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64 The PCB Magazine • October 2015 and these are considered wastes. Some of them must be mitigated, while others should be to- tally eliminated. Toyota numbered seven basic wastes on their industry: overproduction, waiting, unnecessary transport, incorrect processing, excess invento- ry, unnecessary movement and defects. Besides overproduction, which means producing when there are no orders, which is not applied to the PCB industry that works in a make-to-order manner, all the other categorized wastes can be found in a PCB shop. Wastes such as incorrect processing, defects, and waiting, which result in delay to the cus- tomer, are quite common in PCB factories pro- ducing small to medium batches, including prototypes. The combination of short delivery time along with the great variety of different batches and products running at the same time can make things harder to manage, driving us to the conclusion that this is just the way our businesses run. I have heard this a lot, but I am not convinced it is true. If we take a careful look at the factory through our customers' eyes, we will see that most of PCBs go through a similar process. Based on that, we must drive our efforts to work hard on process stability in order to get the PCB built right the first time. Having a process- driven company will allow you to produce faster and better products as well as eliminate wastes. Although wastes will never be totally elimi- nated, they can shrink significantly after you start working on them. That is why the next topic is of paramount importance. Continuous Improvement (Long Term Results) Nothing in this article will make such an impact on your company as the continuous improvement philosophy. I have covered a cou- ple of management innovation tools, applying Figure 2: Example of value stream mapping. THE PCB MARATHON FeATure