Family Values

Value is a very important concept in the quest to eradicate waste. Activities that add no value should be minimized to free up as much of your time as possible. This seems like common sense but often it takes long observation of an activity to identify and eliminate non-value added work. A quick example can be seen in financial transactions. In paying bills the only activity of value is transferring funds from your account to the account of those you must pay. For many years my wife and I took the traditional route when paying bills. We would wait until all of the bills had come in for the month, then sit down to write checks and mail them all out in a large batch. Our bill paying process flow at that time is represented by the diagram below.



Not only is there much non-value added activity in this process, but there are additional costs beyond those of paying the bills. Stamps, envelopes, and gas must be consumed and paid for. Also there is the time required to collect these items and the delays that must be endured before the payment has cleared. Any mistakes may not be detected for some time and penalty fees or credit problems can result.

We have since abandoned this process for online bill pay. With this we receive most of our bills online, pay them immediately without the need for driving, stamps or envelopes, and the funds transfer time is shortened to two days at most. Now the flow chart looks like this:




With this flow we have eliminated all extra expense, as well as limiting our non-value added activity. I am currently working one the next phase of this plan by setting up bills to be automatically paid as they arrive, without the need for me to approve the transactions. If I am able to achieve this there will be no remaining non-value added elements in our bill paying process.

This is only one example of how identifying value can lead to increased free time and simultaneously save you money.