This point requires specific mention, even if correlated with organization.
In fact, productivity's loss does not always depend on an incoherent process or an improvable organization.
Many times, it depends on external events from the process, which influence work efficiency and that, in the daily routine become habitual and are no longer discerned.
It is a question of culture or inertia, which induces the staff to take them as a part of the process without trying to solve them.

When a foreman is questioned about times or standards and he answers: «it depends», that answer hides the situation and the consequent productivity loss.

In order to restore efficiency to the maximum level is necessary to:

• Isolate problems and events external from the process, to quantify cost and delta coefficient of efficiency they generate
• Identify the optimal standards, which do not include efficiency losses produced by those events
• Make staff aware so that they comprise and assume these new standards like target
• Train and help them so that they respond properly in the presence of problems and formulate a solution

Once efficiency is restored to a proper level, it will be possible to recuperate productivity keeping the superfluous costs' reduction or employing releases resources to increase production.

The chart above illustrates this concept: an efficiency improvement releases resources that can be employed to increase the production or can be saved to reduce costs.