Based on patterns observed across real organisations
Mid-morning, the detective arrives on the shop floor of a busy operation.
At first glance, everything appears productive. People are moving constantly. Drawers open and close. Chairs slide back and forth. Screens flicker between systems.
One employee stands, walks across the room to collect a file, returns to their desk, realises they need another document, and repeats the journey. Nearby, a colleague swivels between two monitors, a printer behind them, and a filing cabinet just out of reach, performing the same sequence dozens of times an hour. Across the room, a team member searches through multiple folders to find the right version of a document, clicking, scrolling, and opening files until they finally land on the one they need.
By lunchtime, everyone is busy. Everyone is moving. Everyone is tired.
No one questions it. This is just how the work gets done.
What you are seeing here is Motion Waste, one of the 8 wastes in Lean (TIMWOODS), where unnecessary movement of people adds time, effort, and strain without adding value.
If you’re new to the 8 wastes, this case links back to the bigger picture explored in our series introduction blog post here.
The Scene: When Effort Feels Like Productivity
In many organisations, effort is often mistaken for effectiveness.
People are on their feet, switching between tasks, navigating systems and constantly in motion. It creates a sense of energy and activity that feels reassuring.
But a closer look reveals the hidden cost. In one organisation, employees regularly walked thousands of extra steps each day simply because equipment and materials were not positioned where they were needed. In another, teams spent significant portions of their time searching for information across multiple systems that had never been integrated. In yet another, poorly designed workspaces meant that even simple tasks required repeated reaching, bending, or repositioning.
The work gets done, but it takes more effort than it should.
Because every unnecessary movement, whether physical or digital, adds time, reduces focus, and gradually wears people down.
Clues: Where to Look for Motion Waste
Motion waste is any unnecessary movement of people within a process. It often goes unnoticed because it is built into everyday ways of working.
You are likely to see it in places like these:
- People repeatedly getting up to retrieve tools, documents, or information that could be within reach
- Poorly organised workspaces where items are difficult to locate quickly
- Tasks that require unnecessary reaching, bending, or repositioning due to layout design
Anywhere people are working harder than necessary to complete a task, motion waste is likely present.
Interrogation Questions: How to Spot It in Your Process
To uncover motion waste, you don’t need time‑and‑motion studies, you need fresh eyes and a willingness to watch how work actually flows.
Start with questions like:
- How often do people need to move, search, reach, or switch systems to complete a single task?
- When was the last time the workspace or process layout was reviewed with efficiency and ergonomics in mind?
- If we redesigned this process today, how could we reduce motion and make tasks physically and digitally easier to complete?
These questions shift the focus from “Are people busy?” to “Is the work easy to do?”
The Verdict: What’s Really Going On
Motion waste is rarely intentional. Workspaces evolve over time, systems are added as needs change, and processes grow around existing constraints.
However, without regular review, these small inefficiencies accumulate. Layouts become cluttered, systems become fragmented, and simple tasks require more effort than they should.
Across organisations, the same pattern emerges: people adapt to inefficient setups rather than the setup being improved to support them.
Over time, this does more than slow things down. It increases fatigue, reduces consistency, and takes attention away from higher-value work.
As we close the file on The Case of the Extra Steps, the trail does not lead to the individuals doing the work, it leads to the environment and process they have been asked to work within.