Jun 12 2012
Just don’t start with 5S!
See on Scoop.it – lean manufacturing
How many failed implementations will it take before consultants stop advising clients to start Lean implementation with 5S?
Telling people to start by tidying up their rooms works as well with manufacturing organizations as with teenagers. Try telling a machinist in a job-shop — who has spent the last 15 years making himself indispensable on a milling machine — that he should label hand-tool locations to make it easier for somebody else to do his job, and see how far you get.
5S is finishing work that you should undertake once you have changed the mode of operation. In cells, machinists in cells, who run multiple, different machines and rotate between positions need visible locations for tools, and will willingly maintain them.
Yet the following is what keeps getting posted on the web:
“With […] lean becoming increasingly […] popular […], a methodology that is […] intertwined with lean, yet capable of being a stand-alone culture in itself, is that of ‘5S’. Whether just the first step in a bigger plan to implement lean throughout a business, or simply a cheaper alternative and less daunting efficiency solution for SME manufacturers; 5S would seem to be an ideal starting point.”
See on www.manufacturingdigital.com
June 12, 2012 @ 6:23 pm
Michel, Is this not the same old story of people looking for simplistic solutions so they can claim they are “doing lean” rather than addressing the much harder and more profound issues of the actual flow through, silos, interruptions, etc., and the culture that prevents continuous improvement?
Every effort to avoid the hard work is an effort to avoid lean.
June 12, 2012 @ 7:15 pm
Michel: appreciate you telling it like it is. it sickens me when I read these simplistic lean suggestions. I work with clients in distribution environments and see a lot of messy warehouses. Surely common sense dictates a more orderly workspace. But, this not what they are expecting of me….they are expecting a lot more.
June 13, 2012 @ 12:26 am
Nice article, Michel.
Quite truly, one can be extremely tidy and extremely bankrupt at the same time.
5-S will only work iff (if & only if), the Lean foundation has been institutionalized to withstand and support it!
June 13, 2012 @ 12:35 pm
Couldn’t agree more.
5-S needs to be a solution to a problem. Until you have established the visual flow controls and developed the PDCA loops that will signal real customer focused problems, you don’t know what problems you have. If you don’t know what problems you have you will be forced to create blanket standards for success. You will make standards like: “Sort everything that hasn’t been used in a month” regardless of the lead times or repetitiveness of the process. That leads directly to the wonderfully snide and absolutely justified remarks like, “We had that tool until somebody 5s’d it”.
Even better when 5S is the only lean tool introduced to an associate, then they start to equate 5S and lean as being one in the same. The outcome statement from this is: “We used to have the flexibility to handle that until we started Lean”.
June 13, 2012 @ 2:03 pm
Michel,
To be a contrarian: I think there is real value in applying 5S early when dealing with an office environment. In contrast to the experienced machinist who knows where all his tools are, most knowledge workers don’t have a good handle on where their information (their WIP) is. I’m sure you’ve seen smart, experienced people squander countless minutes and hours simply looking for information.
I’m not arguing that 5S should be the first activity; as Kris Hallan says, 5S is a solution to a problem, not just “the first lean step.” But more often than not, it’s a very valuable early step in office improvement.
Why 5S fails | Michel Baudin's Blog
November 18, 2012 @ 11:19 am
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