5S

Oct 4 2017

Toyota Helps a Young Inventor; Look at His Dad’s Toyota Desk | Mark Graban | LeanBlog

“Toyota USA shared a nice video featuring an 11-year old inventor, Bishop Curry. His dad, Bishop Curry Sr. works for Toyota Financial Services and he’s also in the video.[…] In the video, some small details beyond his invention jumped out at me. I was looking at his dad’s Toyota workplace.For one, the elder Bishop is shown at his stand-up desk.

I noticed Toyota is setting a good example when it comes to desk practices (beyond the standing desk and the multiple monitors, which are proven to improve productivity).When looking at what some other companies do, I’ve complained for a long time about what I think are misguided “Office 5S” or “Lean Office” initiatives that will insist it’s “Lean” to do things like telling employees they must:

  • Put tape around your keyboard and desk items
  • Remove family photos as “non-productive items”

Sourced through LeanBlog

Michel Baudin‘s comments: Over the years, Mark has posted several times about misguided efforts at “Office 5S” that don’t improve performance and are resented by office workers. Generally, I agree with him. Tidying up desks doesn’t have much of an effect because most of the work isn’t done on the desk but inside a computer network. Where organization is required is in the databases and software applications an office relies on, more than in the furniture or the copier.

Continue reading…

By • Blog clippings, Uncategorized • 1 • Tags: , ,

May 17 2016

5S at Google?

In How Google Works, on p. 38, executives Eric Schmidt and Jonathan Rosenberg wrote:

“When offices get crowded, they tend to get messy too. Let them. When Eric [Schmidt] first arrived at Google in 2001, he asked the head of facilities, George Salah, to clean up the place. George did, and was rewarded with a note the next day from Larry Page, saying, ‘Where did all my stuff go?’ That random collection of stuff was an icon of a busy, stimulated workforce. […] It’s OK to let your office be one hot mess.”

So the company whose mission is “to organize the world’s information and make it universally accessible and useful” has no use for 5S in its offices. The explanation they give is that Google employees are “smart creatives” who do their best work in a messy environment, like Pablo Picasso in his studio. But I can think of another reason: the information that matters to the googlers’ work is the stuff behind their screens, not on their desks. It’s in Google’s data centers, and they work on it with Google’s software.

Continue reading…

By • Management • 7 • Tags: , , ,

Mar 25 2015

Questions from Croatia about 5S

Following is a list of questions by Stjepan Sinko, from Croatia, about 5S implementation, with my answers:

  1. Are there any risks associated with the implementation of the 5S program?

    Yes. A clumsy, poorly timed 5S implementation can backfire, hurt management’s credibility with the work force, and make it more difficult to try again later.

    Continue reading…

By • Answers to reader questions • 9 • Tags: ,

Jun 25 2014

5S: It’s not About What is Done but Who Does It

In yet another discussion of 5S in the TPS Principles and Practice discussion group on LinkedIn, Ryan Ripley asked about the real meaning of the 3rd S, “shine.”  As several contributors pointed out, the 3rd S in 5S is Seiso, which translates to Clean, not Shine. As discussed in an earlier post, translating the 5Ss by five English words that begin with S is a misguided effort that results in systematic mistranslations.

For the first 4Ss, an earlier, imperfect but more accurate translation that I heard in the UK was R.I.C.K., which stood for:

  1. Remove — take all the items that are not routinely needed out of the work space.”
  2. Identify — assign and label locations for all routinely needed items.
  3. Clean — clean the equipment and the floors.
  4. Keep clean — enforce the daily discipline of doing 1 through 3.

I would add Second-Nature for the 5th S, because it means practicing the first four until they are assimilated to the point that enforcement is no longer necessary. This makes the acronym R.I.C.K.S. The translation as Sort, Straighten, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain is not remotely accurate and should be abandoned rather than plumbed for intellectual depth.

What is essential about the 3rd S, “Cleaning” is not what the task is but who does it. A janitor will wipe the oil off the floor and that’s it, the job is done. If the operator does the cleaning, then the hand guides the eyes and draws attention to details like frayed cables, broken dials, or puddles that weren’t there before. It works as an early warning system, and a stepping stone towards autonomous maintenance.

A challenge in organizing for operators to do this is that it is not direct production work. Much of what we do in designing operator jobs is making sure that they are relieved of all tasks that do not directly move the product towards completion. That is why, for example, assemblers should not have to unpack parts but instead should have parts unpacked by others and presented to them within arm’s reach, oriented for ease of assembly.

In the same logic, you might imagine that it makes sense to have others pick up after the operators, putting each tool back where it belongs and cleaning the work space. I remember a production manager in a car plant responding to the idea of setting aside the last 5 minutes of each shift to 5S by saying “that would cost us three cars.”

In reality, of course, I never heard of production performance going down as a result of doing 5S, but it is not a priori obvious.

By • Tools • 4 • Tags: , ,

Mar 5 2014

Avoid Inaccurate Signage!

The following is a sign I saw in a plane yesterday:

Unintended signage in airliner galley
Unintended signage in airliner galley

I thought it was amusing, and told a flight attendant that it was unlikely any passenger would mistake that location for a lavatory. She explained  that this sticker was all they could find to hold up the lid of the waste container. While it may not have conveyed the best image to passengers, functionally, it was harmless, but it reminded me of not-so-harmless cases of wrong, obsolete, or ignored signage on factory floors.

Many such signs are often posted hastily as part of a “5S event.” Three months later, you see shadow boards with tools permanently missing, full pallets in front of signs that reserve the space for empties, and junk encroaching on marked transportation aisles. While each instance is a minor issue, collectively, even a small number is sufficient to destroy the credibility of the signage plantwide.

Signage on factory floors must be posted with excruciating care for accuracy and clarity, and it must then be enforced rigorously and consistently. Otherwise, it is a waste of effort.

By • Management • 1 • Tags: , ,

Oct 6 2013

Predicting the benefits of “Lean Actions”

In the TPS + 1 ENGINEERING group on LinkedIn, Hela Hassine asked  “How can we predict and quantify the profit of lean actions before implementing them?”

I see three types of what Hela Hassine call “actions”:

  1. For some, you can do a complete discounted cash flow analysis before implementing. Cellularizing a job-shop falls into this category.
  2. For others, you cannot calculate the benefits ahead of time, but you can measure them afterwards. When you improve quality, first you can’t tell ahead of time by how much it will actually improve, and second, you can’t tell how much good this improvement will do to your business. After you have improved quality, you know by how much, and you can also measure the market impact of the improved quality, which is its dominant benefit. There is no way you can justify quality improvement ahead of time through cost-of-quality analysis.
  3. For the rest, the benefits are too diffuse to be measurable. 5S falls is in this category.

This has obvious consequences on implementation sequencing, that are often overlooked. Projects that lend themselves to a-priori justification are easiest to sell to management, and success in such projects gives you the credibility you need to undertake others with less tangible benefits. In other words, you are better off starting with cells than with 5S.

By • Management • 6 • Tags: , ,

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