In a broad sense, waste can be considered as any activity or resource in an organization that does not add value to an external customer. Some possible examples of waste are materials that are thrown away, rework of materials and documents, movement of items from one place to another, inventories, time spent waiting in line, people working in processes that are not important to the customer, extra steps or motion in a process, repeating work that has previously been done by others, over-specification of materials and requirements, and more staff than required to match the demand for products and services.

Toyota is famous for focusing improvement on the following "seven wastes":

• Waste of overproduction
• Waste of waiting
• Waste of transportation
• Waste of processing itself
• Waste of inventory (stock)
• Waste of motion
• Waste of producing defective parts or products