Over the years I have been known to badmouth typical approaches to 5S as a glorified housekeeping exercise – getting lean without doing any of the hard stuff. In this post I called it 'lean-lite', and in this one I called it 'Spring cleaning'.
in an effort to be more positive and helpful, and less cynical (anyone taking bets on how long this new leaf is going to stay turned over?), I want to offer up my alternative. This is the 5S checklist I have been using for some time. It has to be adapted and modified for each unique manufacturing situation – you should do whatever tweaking you think necessary before using it too – but here it is.
Dan Markovitz says
Now you just need to adapt them to knowledge workers (ie., desk jockeys). More difficult to do, but no less important, I think.
Dick Kusleika says
Nice checklist. You should consider eliminating some waste by changing your default worksheets in a new workbook from 3 to 1. :)
Jim Fernandez says
Well, I’m sure you knew that by bringing up the subject of 5S you would get some of us Lean thinkers to comment on your thoughts on 5S. Your 5S check list is very interesting. Because it is close to how I approach 5S. When 5S is applied to the physical facilities, you are correct, it is a housekeeping exercise. And some companies need to start there.
What I do after the “housekeeping exercise” is I apply 5S to the information that is used in the process. Then I apply it to the work or tasks that are performed in the process. So in other words we sort, simplify, shine, etc. the information and the work that is performed. There is a distinct difference between, sorting, simplifying and shining where you keep you screwdriver, and sorting, simplifying and shining how you use your screwdriver. As I read your list, I see that is in fact what you are doing with most of your check off items.
By the way, a friend of mine went to Japan and took a Lean tour of several companies. At every company they touted their 5S program. It took him a little while to analyze what they were doing and then realized they were taking the 5S to higher levels than simply housekeeping. That is what helped me realize we needed to apply 5S to information and work tasks. It is too bad that most Lean training never mentions using 5S at the higher levels.
Steve H says
Jim – good analogy with the screwdriver. I never thought of it like that.
Rick Bohan says
As I tell my clients, the goal of lean is NOT cost reduction and the goal of 5S is NOT that the work area looks better. Those may be happy by-products of well-implemented programs but programs that put those forward as the primary objectives will almost certainly fail.
That said…there’s no such thing as lean without operations excellence and there’s no such thing as operations excellence without order.