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Introduction
After suggesting 5S as an initial step in business transformation, I often get questions such as, Why should we care about 5S? or Well, thats nice, but why take the time to ask everyone to do 5S and then actually audit each other for compliance to make it part of our culture? and What, exactly, is the PAYOFF for doing this? This white paper will explain 5S, how it is implemented and how it pays off in easy-to-follow terms. Well also cover what you can expect your learning curve to be and the importance of celebrating success.
What is 5S?
5S is the methodology based on five Japanese terms to create a workplace suited for visual control and lean production. Table 1.0 displays a concise description of each of the 5Ss:
The 5S framework was originally developed by just-in-time expert Hiroyuki Hirano. According to Hirano, without the organization and discipline provided by successfully implementing the 5Ss, other tools and methods are likely to fail.
Step
S1
Name
Seiri
Translation
Sort
Description
Separate needed items from unneeded ones and remove the latter.
S2 S3 S4 S5 5S is
Neatly arrange items for use. Clean up the work area Sort, simplify and scrub daily. Always follow the first four Ss
One tool that supports the principle of waste elimination by organizing the workplace An integral part of the Lean process The difference between ordinary and extraordinary companies While simple in concept, 5S takes dedication and hard work to really happen.
How is 5S Implemented?
While every company is different, generally if every employee contributes about 40 hours over the first year to help implement and make 5S a habit success will soon follow. This includes initial training and implementation, team meetings to work out details, ongoing improvement implementation, auditing, and time to stop and celebrate at key achievement points. If 40 hours seems like a lot of effort, consider the next section below before passing final judgment.
5S not only streamlines manufacturing, but its effective in service organizations, too. Six Sigma programs like those offered through Villanova University online can pay for themselves in the time and money youll save hunting for necessary supplies, tools, files and equipment.
After Implementing 5S
Visits Time Spent Each Visit Total Time for 600 Employees 30 hours
Increase in Productivity
93%
Properly scaled and applied, 5S can make a tremendous difference in the ability to execute quickly, with better quality, and at a lower cost. If you have read even one book on time management, you know that time is a precious commodity that can never be recovered. By being selective about what we spend our time on and prioritizing, we can become much more effective in our outcomes and results. 5S is a structured approach that teaches us how to apply excellent time management skills to workplace organization and cleanliness. A natural extension of making 5S a part of your culture ultimately involves everyone learning better personal time management skills. That is a completely separate story, but let me say this: Never accept your current state as good enough! There are companies out there right now working diligently to take your business away by being better than you are. If you do your part to embrace continuous improvement, together we can be the them the ones who always win, the best at what we do.
which provides an incentive for all employees to share in the companys growth and profits. Everyone is extremely conscious of what time is spent on, because in a real way, every employees paycheck is affected by poor use of time. By beginning to implement 5S, this company quickly realized improvement. The president confided to me the last fiscal year they enjoyed a nearly 20% boost in company-wide productivity and profit sharing. She explained it like this: Ron, I know we did not make many of the changes that you wanted us to, but we did use 5S to communicate better visually in the workplace. Thats the only difference for us that has been implemented since last year. That said, last year we had higher sales in December than this year and lost money. With lower sales this year, we MADE money.
Case Study #2: 5S Improves Customer Service, Increases Delivery Speed and Improves Quality in All Business Processes
Applying 5S in production areas is easy to justify and to see a dramatic difference quickly. In office and service processes, it is much more difficult to measure the difference. Think about a call center where for the most part work is performed independently and in an electronic setting. What are the 5S benefits to look for? The key here is to get folks thinking about what customers care about and then finding creative ways to provide those things. In the nonprofit insurance and retirement benefits company I mentioned earlier, what customers want is pretty basic: Pay my claims correctly and quickly, and if I have a question, dont make me wait, and always answer my questions correctly the first time. One of the logical extensions of 5S, is What tools are needed to do the job? and Make it easy to find or put tools away in 30 seconds or less. If we are working in a call center answering questions, what serves our customer better: making them wait while we hunt for the information, or even worse, telling them someone will call them back later? How would our customers feel if we were able to swiftly handle at least 80% of the requests in bench-marked time and near-perfect quality? Well, I think we all can agree that that this is the right kind of goal to set for customer service, since that is how we would like to be treated when we need help.
materials and systems must be error-proofed and the work setting is made as visual as possible. There are two main reasons to accomplish this: you cannot remember everything, and humans operate most effectively when there is uniformity. If a common incoming question has more than two possible answers, it is a clear signal that our process will have defective results. Since call center work is by definition fraught with misunderstandings and errors, why wouldnt we be willing to do whatever it takes to get it right the first time? The time spent to develop visuals on the system and how-to guides (as part of the bigger 5S strategy) makes perfect sense. Not only can an effective 5S strategy be very helpful in increasing customer service and quality, it also enables increased flexibility for our workforce. If we have error proofed and made more than 80% of the work in the call center visual, we can now adjust our resources more quickly. Utilizing temporary helpers or visitors from another department or area will be more effective in handling routine call center workload fluctuation quickly and flawlessly. Now it is possible to have a team approach where experts can help screen incoming calls and route less complicated calls to those who can handle them, with the less frequent, but more problematic requests being handled by the experts. This challenges the traditional thinking in call center management around measuring and driving calls-per-person-per-hour. Clearly, all incoming calls are not equal, so our system must adapt to recognize that call volumes will fluctuate. I believe that it is possible to improve call center speed and quality by 50% or more while holding the line on resources. However, this can only be accomplished if there is a dedicated effort to work as a team to flawlessly execute and leverage the tools at our disposal, such as 5S. The printing company I mentioned earlier has a very active call center where sales people call customers and take calls to process orders for new print jobs. The call center experienced many problems including long wait times, inaccurate handling of questions, long delays to hand-off people on hold with questions, and many mistakes in order instructions that resulted in reprints (rework). In fact, the number one profit drain on the company at the start of the process was reprints due to office-generated errors in taking orders. By aggressively applying a 5S team approach, they created visual training aids, introduced visual error-proofing measures, restructured who does what
The most common mistake companies make when implementing 5S is the failure to train adequately at the outset. Upper management and other members of the steering group must have 5S training like that provided in Villanova Universitys Six Sigma programs.
Moving on to S2 and S3
Before making a place for everything and putting everything in its place you need to locate everything or have everything you need on hand. This is a subtle point. After initial sorting to remove unneeded items, sometimes it is possible to jump to S2 and S3 without first properly identifying and accounting for the needed missing items. This makes a good case for a team effort; it is hard for one person to think of everything that should be there. Only after you have a complete inventory of what is needed, can you finish S2 and S3 and begin the S4 step (Standardizing). Standardizing is the step where we make everything look like a showcase, everything has a clearly identifiable home. Once this step is completed, it is easy to see how much is needed, and a system is in place to maintain supply visual storage techniques are in place that meet or beat the 30 second rule: If you cant find it or put it away in 30 seconds, you are not done with 5S. I take it one step further in office situations where we need to find items when someone is unavailable. If anyone cant find it in your workspace in 30 seconds or less, you are not done with 5S. This makes a strong case for groups of people (who do similar work) to standardize their workspaces together (this contributes to increased customer satisfaction immediately). When working as a team, we sometimes need
A customer does not have to talk to the same person every time he or she calls because there is uniformity in the department and another team member can serve them almost as well The customer will not hesitate to call back because of previous excellent results, which mean better overall satisfaction Customers do not feel that they are being rushed because employees have more time to devote to customer issues as a result of less time being wasted elsewhere Fewer hand-offs (referring a caller to another person because we cannot quickly and correctly answer the question) are required because more of us can handle the call the first time this can be a huge factor that increases customer satisfaction After standardizing your work and making 5S a habit, you are not done. The old maxim is true if you do the same thing over and over but expect different results, you are on the verge of insanity. The corollary is true, too. If you want consistent, high quality, fast results for your customers, everyone must agree to do it the same way. If you expect this to happen without reaching consensus on the one best method, then you are also practicing a form of insanity, right? Completion of S3 is signaled when the area is uniform and visual, surfaces are good as new in appearance, appropriate lighting and equipment is in place, and we can now take our after photos demonstrating the minimally acceptable standard for auditing the area. S2 and S3 start almost immediately after S1 is underway and may continue for 5 to 8 months as we make our way through all areas.
strategy into your checklists. For example, changing air filters, cleaning out copier cabinets, and backing up critical files can all be added as part of the 5S cleaning checklist strategy. This makes sense if these things are neglected, they can break down unexpectedly causing us to ignore our all-important customers while we scramble to fix them. S5 Sustain starts after areas have completed S3 and S4 and continues for 6 to 9 months as we make our way through all areas. S5 auditing can start at any time, but as a practical matter, we usually do not start formal audits until most areas have made good progress usually after 3 or 4 months. Auditing is the most challenging part of implementing 5S. At first, it is hard to understand what the standards should be. Then, it is getting over the fear and hurt feelings that someone is looking critically at your work space after all, during the week most of us spend more time at work than any other place! Later, it is often difficult to give clear feedback to areas audited on what to do next. What is amazing to me is that time after time when I do initial audits my scores are fundamentally in agreement with what the team sees. Assigning a numerical score from a 1 to 5 (1 = no evidence of 5S to 5 = perfection) is rarely a big problem. The challenge is in figuring out what needs to be different and how to proactively and professionally share this feedback with the areas audited. After two or three successive audits in all areas have been completed with aggregated numeric results posted (hopefully showing steady progress), you are probably beginning to master the process. After each audit, the score is posted and graphed for team reference.
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Figure 2.0 - Typical Score Achievement Curve One Year after S5 Begins
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organization to see and learn about new techniques that are being used.
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Summary
The master on 5S is Hiroyuki Hirano. His book, Pillars of the Visual Workplace, is considered by many to be the 5S bible. To recap, here are key takeaways: 1. 5S is a relatively simple methodology that is hygienic in nature a solid foundation of discipline and organization upon which to build a world-class enterprise. 2. Initially 5S requires a significant investment of time. After startup the incre mental time saved more than compensates for the time spent to maintain 5S every day. 3. Properly implemented 5S will have a measurable impact on organizational performance in: Improved quality Increase in available workspace Improved employee morale Increased customer satisfaction Increased bottom line 4. 5S is uniformly implemented everywhere in the business including shared office process areas! 5. 5S ties nicely to a visual workplace and error-proofing strategies that simplify training and job rotation efforts. It does not stop there. In addition, I always strongly recommend integrating the 5S mentality with a Total Productive Maintenance, or Autonomous Maintenance Program. Cleaning is a form of inspection, and inspection leads to early detection. Why not have every one involved with keeping things working right? 6. Implementation of 5S follows logical stages, progressing from S1 though S5, though the phases may overlap significantly. Starting from a zero state, most companies allow about a full year of focus to make it a habit and be able to scale back surveillance audits.
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Ron Crabtree, CPIM, CIRM Adjunct Faulty for Lean, Six Sigma and Business Analysis Villanova University Online
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