Following the footsteps of Taiichi Ohno

One of the great benefits of moving into our new home has been the opportunity to practise my personal philosophy of ‘Reducing Muda’ or ‘Lean Thinking’. Muda means ‘waste’ in Japanese, but is more accurately defined as ‘futility’ or ‘purposelessness’. In his words, Ohno-sensei called it “any human activity which absorbs resources but creates no value.” And Ohno-sensei opposed every from of waste.

Thanks to his established frameworks, Ohno-sensei became known as the father of the Toyota Production System, now the cornerstone of the world’s premier manufacturing organization and a precursor to the famous corporate bible Lean Thinking by Dr James Womack and Professor Daniel Jones.

How does this relate to making Taman Desa a better place to be? Well, all waste in my previous household was eliminated in the 3R method: reduce, reuse and recycle. The recycle part of things were easy because I bought three separate bins and segregated my waste. Every once in a while, this waste was sent to the Alam Flora pick-up centre nearby and I was actually paid for it.

Today, not only does this continue in Casa Desa but I manage to fit ‘compact fluorescent lights’ (or CFLs) and reduce my electricity bills by an estimated 80 percent. I also estimate that the higher cost of installing these CFLs will be see the payback by the end of the year and net savings in the second year onwards.

I’ve also installed blinds as opposed to curtains. These reduce the need for solvent-exposing dry cleaning and also eliminate exposure to dust-mites and other airborne allergens. All they need is a gentle wipe with a cloth once a week.

I’m in the midst of retro-fitting my toilets to half-flush versions that will save water when flushing. I mean, what’s the point of flushing half a gallon of clean water when all you did was pee?

Finally, I’ve installed intelligent fans and an aircond unit but exclusively use the former, leaving the latter on standby should guests really need to get colder. I also bought a south-facing unit so the home is never really hot. However the breeze in Casa Desa (being on a hill) is wonderfully soothing. The fans are used for overnight sleep and can be timed to cut off after 6 hrs so that the last hour or two of early morning sleep is still comfortable because the sun hasn’t fully warmed the home yet. And I get to save on more electricity.

In case some of you thought, no, I don’t use hot water so solar panels aren’t necessary yet. But you can bet I’m thinking of installing one in future to further cut down on electricity usage.

All this has made my home less CO2 reliant. Less electricity being used and less water being used. Finally, less waste to dispose of in our country’s growing landfills. If you do have the time, do consider these solutions as Global Warming is one problem that truly affects everyone. And if we don’t individually do something about it the end result is the very real threat to our Earth’s ecosystem.

Besides my work as a filmmaker, this is my other passion in life. But more on this in the posts to come…