Quick and Easy Kaizen #11 - Mow your leaves...

Quick and Easy Kaizen is an improvement that you can easily do for yourself that improves a process by improving quality, saving time, and so forth. The book, The Idea Generator, by Norm Bodek addresses quick and easy Kaizen and I have been practicing this technique at work for some time. Using the ideas from Norm's book, I have added improvements at home and here are some that have made my life better but didn't require that much time and effort to implement.



#11 - Mowing leaves



Pretty self explanatory. I marvel at how much work it is to blow, bag, rake, and move bags of leaves to be picked up-lots and lots of muda...and that's the beginning. There is even more waste and inefficiency once the leaves are picked up and carted all over the place to be burned at the end. How wasteful can this be...and for basically no value.



Here's why I mow instead of bag:

1. Much easier on my back-bagging requires lots of bending.


2. Better excercise to walk and mow rather than raking, bending, and moving.


3. Leaves are mulched up and put back into the local soil-that way God intended.


4. Reduces the number of tools used to one lawn mover versus a rake, blower, bags, gloves, ties, and a mower.


5. Leaves are processed faster than the bagging method(which can take weeks to finally eliminate leaves).


6. Less petroleum used in lawn mowing than in leaf removal trucks.


7. Reduces goverment waste by eliminating need for more garbage trucks, more fuel, and more people to dispose of.

So, stop bagging leaves-just mow'em!

Dan Lafever, Kaizeneer.