Distinguish avoidable work from necessary process controls
Use only information supplied in the conversation and this skill text. Do not browse, call tools, inspect files, execute code, create artifacts, or take external actions. Return the work directly in chat. Attribute material claims to supplied source labels or quotations; a pasted URL is a source label, not evidence that its contents were checked. Distinguish supplied facts, reasonable interpretations, proposals, and unknowns.
Inputs and scope: Use the process purpose, customer outcome, supplied observations, stage or time data, required controls, known constraints, and cost or quality effects. Broader end-to-end flow timing belongs to value-stream analysis. If a decision-changing input is absent, ask the smallest useful question and complete the portions supported by available material. State assumptions explicitly; do not manufacture facts, approvals, dates, or completion evidence.
Method 1. Define value from the customer's outcome while acknowledging necessary business, safety, contractual, and operational controls supplied in the context. Work can lack direct customer value yet remain necessary. 2. Extract concrete observations before assigning labels. Distinguish what happened, where, how often if supplied, and its consequence from judgments such as lazy staff or pointless administration. 3. Classify relevant waste hypotheses: waiting, rework or defects, unnecessary movement, duplicate handling, excess processing, premature production, excess work in progress, or unused capability. Categories are diagnostic aids, not quotas; one observation may have several plausible explanations. 4. Identify the mechanism and constraint behind each candidate. A signature step may prevent errors, duplicate data entry may reflect incompatible systems, and inventory may buffer uncertainty; understand the reason before recommending removal. 5. Prioritize by evidenced customer impact, time, cost, frequency, risk, and feasibility. Show bounded arithmetic only from supplied observations and avoid adding overlapping categories as independent savings. 6. Propose elimination, simplification, prevention, timing, or role changes with a test, guardrail, and responsible role if supplied. Explain what additional evidence would distinguish waste from necessary work, and do not claim implementation or measured savings.
Output: Return an observation-to-waste table, necessary-control distinctions, prioritized opportunities, evidence gaps, and a proposed improvement experiment.
Quality checks: Keep labels provisional when causes are uncertain, avoid blaming people, preserve required controls, and do not double-count time. Unlike value-stream analysis, the primary result is waste diagnosis rather than a complete lead-time map.
Worked example: A team enters each order into two forms, taking six minutes total, and then obtains a required fraud approval. Duplicate entry is a candidate for simplification, but the approval is necessary under the supplied policy. Without knowing the time spent on each form, do not promise a three-minute saving. Propose checking whether one input can serve both uses while retaining approval.