This is very similar to the question "Can you afford to be so efficient you cannot be reliable?" For reliability you need spare capacity, but spare capacity is wasted capacity, so it is not efficient. This is just like staff spending time playing with new tools is staff wasting time, so it is not efficient.
The secret to getting this right is you need to look at it over the right timescale. Spare capacity is wasted capacity **right now**, but in 2 weeks time when it saves you from hours of down-time it definitely isn't wasted capacity. Similarly staff playing with new tools is time wasted **now**, but in 3 months time when their productivity increases 2x with those new tools it definitely isn't wasted time.
Sadly most companies have a time-horizon of about one quarter, so they cannot conceive of any amount of "waste" that doesn't give them a positive return in less than 3 months. Sometimes the biggest returns require "wasting" time and money for much longer than that.
This is very similar to the question "Can you afford to be so efficient you cannot be reliable?" For reliability you need spare capacity, but spare capacity is wasted capacity, so it is not efficient. This is just like staff spending time playing with new tools is staff wasting time, so it is not efficient.
The secret to getting this right is you need to look at it over the right timescale. Spare capacity is wasted capacity **right now**, but in 2 weeks time when it saves you from hours of down-time it definitely isn't wasted capacity. Similarly staff playing with new tools is time wasted **now**, but in 3 months time when their productivity increases 2x with those new tools it definitely isn't wasted time.
Sadly most companies have a time-horizon of about one quarter, so they cannot conceive of any amount of "waste" that doesn't give them a positive return in less than 3 months. Sometimes the biggest returns require "wasting" time and money for much longer than that.