Good article. I especially like steps 3 (cancel unnecessary activities...) and 5 (Reduce unnecessary features...). Too often we engage in activities like QFD or FMEA, and forget that, in addition to identifying things we do need to address, those tools help identify things that could be taken out of people's work loads. Assigning precious resources to non-value-added features or tasks is wasteful.
As a tangent: I agree that failure to avail ourselves of people's intelligence is a major waste. Why wouldn't we add: assigning people to useless tasks?