{"id":241,"date":"2026-05-05T10:17:36","date_gmt":"2026-05-05T10:17:36","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/tha.de\/honors\/2026\/?p=241"},"modified":"2026-06-23T16:11:22","modified_gmt":"2026-06-23T16:11:22","slug":"lean-mistakes-are-more-than-a-mistake","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/tha.de\/honors\/2026\/2026\/05\/05\/lean-mistakes-are-more-than-a-mistake\/","title":{"rendered":"LEAN – Mistakes are more than a Mistake!"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Professor: Florian H\u00f6rmann
Authors: Syeda Raza E Zehra, Tobias Sterk
Date: 28.05.2026<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Introduction<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

Imagine for a moment you are attending a seminar session, and suddenly you see a student with bloody hand looking like he is about to faint. You feel your stomach drop. The professor sprints over to the student shouting for first aid kit. Someone else runs out panicking, gets the kit, and rummages through the bag. Its total<\/strong> chaos for the first whole minute. And then the professor turns away from the ‘patient<\/em>‘ and asks you to write down “what went wrong”. The whole ’emergency<\/em>‘ was never real. Completely staged. But the lesson was very very real.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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This week’s session was on LEAN<\/em> mistakes by Professor Florian H\u00f6rmann from faculty of Mechanical and Process Engineering. We were introduced to the idea that a huge chunk of what we do doesn’t actually add value to a process itself. It simply goes to waste. Meaning we aren’t optimizing processes to make them efficient. And thinking leanly<\/em> is figuring out where the waste in a process is and getting rid of it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Prof. Florian also used a ‘show not tell’ method to present this concept to us which definitely<\/strong> stuck with all of us. First, we were introduced to the concept of Lean production where we learned about 7 types of waste (TIMWOOD)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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  • Transport: moving things unnecessarily<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Inventory: having more stock\/material than needed.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Motion: unnecessary movement of people (as we will see later)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Waiting: time lost waiting for the next step.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Over-processing: doing more than needed (eg: extra documentation)<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Overproduction: making more than what the customer asked for\/needs.<\/li>\n\n\n\n
  • Defects: errors that need to be fixed or redoing.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n\n\n\n

    We were then tasked with building a truck using lego bricks, which nearly all the groups failed to do (we built a car instead) due to time pressure, unclear plan and forgetting what the professor asked us to really<\/em> build. Hence, we all ended up putting together cars. More importantly, we witnessed an emergency, that for the first few seconds seemed real and had some of us holding our breaths, but was actually staged. By the end, lean mistakes had gone from an unknown term to something that we felt needs to be addressed more actively.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Key insights<\/strong><\/h3>\n\n\n\n

    Building the truck<\/code><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

    During a team exercise, we were asked to build a truck. Under time pressure and rushing to make something quickly with the blocks, our team, like almost every other team built a car. Not a truck. This was the result of unclear communication, pressure, and the need to immediately deliver something. This taught us the first lesson: We can never deliver the right thing, if we have speed but not clarity. <\/strong>We just deliver faster. From there, we were introduced to the 7 types of waste: TIMWOOD (as mentioned previously)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    Something that made this lesson stick was a video we watched of F1 team members changing tyres in 67 seconds in the early 50’s vs in under 2 seconds now. This difference is extremely significant. Every second that is now saved in the pit stop was previously waste. We had unnecessary movement, no clear plan about roles and timings that resulted in waiting unnecessarily, and disorganized equipment.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

    THE EMERGENCY<\/strong><\/code><\/mark><\/h4>\n\n\n\n

    Then came the emergency. A student’s hand (with palm covered in “blood”, which was actually just ketchup) raised and he began making painful noises almost as if he was about to faint. The professor rushed towards him, and urgently sent someone to grab the first-aid kit, and for a full minute there was complete chaos. Everyone figured within the first 6-7 seconds that it was staged (thankfully!)<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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    Luckily for the ones who weren’t able to make it, we also have a video for you.<\/p>\n\n\n\n