5s Supply Blog

Well, we made it to the last week. We’re in the home stretch now. This 5S Five Things Five Week program has been a challenge, but I know I have gained a deeper appreciation for 5S by doing it. So let’s review Week 4 and see what’s on tap for Week 5.

Review of Week 4

1. Sign up for the free Webinar “What is 5S?” an introduction to 5S this Wednesday, February 24. For bonus points, pass along the information to a friend, colleague, or another company that you think may be interested.

We had a great response to the free webinar “What is 5S”. This one-hour webinar is a brief introduction or overview to 5S. Using a webinar format allows people with an internet connection and a telephone to train as many team members as they want to. For March, we will be adding a new Webinar “5S for the Office”. This will highlight the benefits for 5S in office and support function areas and how it is different from the factory floor style 5S.

2. Take a “Before” photo of an area or a spot where you will be able to make an improvement in our Week #5 assignments.

I decided that we needed to work on our Shipping Area Workbench. Having the photo really makes issues “pop”. We will use this to improve the work area.

3. Look in an office area and see if you can find something that needs a “home” and Set-in-Order.

We keep a lot of different styles, sizes and colors of paper by our copier. Each has it own use and need (hey, I have to have 11” x 17” for my A3’s). It was getting out of control, so we spent some time to organize it. We even discovered that we were storing things there that didn’t need to be there so we red tagged them. Now, each of the types of paper we have has a “home”.

4. See if you can find one “Best Practice”, document it and share it with your team. It doesn’t have to be something big; something simple and easy if fine.

We use post-it notes to capture good ideas and then place them on our obeya wall. This allows us to review the ideas and see how it fits with our Hoshin Planning. We write the heading or topic at the top and then a brief description of the idea. We use what we call the “Six Month Rule” meaning would we understand what you wrote down six months from now. For example, if someone wrote “More Training” that probably wouldn’t be clear enough. But if someone wrote “More training on 5S Red Tagging” that would be better.

5. Check your 5S Red Tag stock. Do you have enough Red Tags for your area?

I have to admit, that was an easy one for us. We have four different styles of 5S Red Tags for use (but, we mostly use two styles – ones with wire and 5S Sticky Tags for the office). While looking around it did become apparent that having a few more 5S Red Tag Holders would be handy.

On to Week 5

1. To help “Sustain” review your 5S audit scores and even your audit sheets. Do your audit sheets need to be updated, edited or modified?

2. Improve the area from the photo you took in Week 4 #2.

3. Take some time to reflect on what you went through – what worked? What didn’t? What can we improve for next time? What did we learn? Were we able to instill any new and better habits?

4. Consider writing up a short article for your company newsletter or something you can share with your boss and team. Maybe it will inspire other people in your organization to add a little focus on your 5S program.

5. Celebrate! You made it through the 5S Five Things Five Week Challenge!

Hang in there, you’re almost done; well actually 5S is never done. But our Challenge will be over soon. Knock these few things out this week. We’ll see how we did overall next week.

I would really like to hear your comments about the challenge. – Tony

I can’t believe we are still going strong. When I originally thought up this crazy idea, I thought that five things a week wouldn’t be so hard to do. But now that we are in the middle of it, we have found that even for us it’s been a challenge. The good news is that we are still at it and have made many improvements. So let’s check in and see how we did last week and see what our new assignments are.

Review of Week 3

1. Hold a short 5S team meeting.

We had a short meeting on Friday that we were actually able to cover #3 below. The meeting didn’t take very much time and we actually had fun and laughed about our subject. During our meeting we discussed where we could use a new standard and then took the time to create it.

2. Check to see if you have all your “Shine” supplies. Does anything need to be ordered or replaced?

We looked at our shine cart and it was well stocked with the items that we need the most. We like having it as part of our 5S program because it is easy to move anywhere we need it. What we did discover though is that we could probably use some “Shine” supplies closer to Point-of-Use. We will determine what we need and where we need it at our next 5S team meeting.

3. Look for a new standard to create for the fourth “S” – Standardize.

Well, based on our meeting in #1 above we did create a new standard. We created a standard for our warehouse washroom. It’s not as bad as you think. It’s actually kept pretty clean and we rarely run out of consumables. We just thought it would be fun to see if we could come up with something useful. We took a picture of the standard we want to maintain and create a “Clean & Inspect Schedule.” Now we have set the rules for the area. I’ll keep you posted on how well we do maintaining it.

4. See if there are any opportunities to apply Reward & Recognition to your team or any outstanding individual with regards to your 5S program.

One of the areas that I think companies can have a weak spot in their 5S program is Reward & Recognition. I was just visiting a plant last week that had a program that focused on their quality. They were looking for ways to tie 5S into this program to make sure the employees understood the importance of their efforts. Don’t forget that R&R does not have to be money! We have some great R&R items that help inspire your employees.

5. Do a 15 minute titivate (to spruce up, to clean, to beautify) before you go home. Get your work area looking nice so you can kick-off next week ready to go.

Once again we worked on our Assembly Area. It turned out nice. It’s all cleaned up, organized and ready to go for this week. Like the quote by John Heywood “Many hands make light work.” Boy, does a clean neat work area do wonders for morale especially walking in on Monday morning!

So let’s move on to this week’s challenge.

Week 4

1. Sign up for the free Webinar “What is 5S?” an introduction to 5S this Wednesday, February 24. For bonus points, pass along the information to a friend, colleague, or another company that you think may be interested.

2. Take a “Before” photo of an area or a spot where you will be able to make an improvement in our Week #5 assignments.

3. Look in an office area and see if you can find something that needs a “home” and Set-in-Order.

4. See if can find one “Best Practice”, document it and share it with your team. It doesn’t have to be something big; something simple and easy if fine.

5. Check your 5S Red Tag stock. Do you have enough Red Tags for your area?

Once again, keep at it even when it’s not easy. We have come a long way over these last few weeks. Let’s keep it going!

Thanks for participating and let me know how you are doing on this challenge. – Tony

Two weeks down, three to go. Let’s review Week 2’s items and see where we stand.

1. Check out your 5S Red Tag Holding Area to see if there is anything you can use in your work area. Follow your standards for removing items from the red tag area. Remember only to take something if you truly need it, otherwise you are defeating the purpose of the first “S” Sort. This also helps reduce costs and by recycling items you are helping make Lean Green.

I found some nice locking casters that will work perfectly to make our fan mobile when it gets warmer out. I put a note on them that we need to hold them for at least another month.

2. Make sure that you have red tags located conveniently in your work area. Have a dedicated home (2nd “S” Set-in-Order) for your 5S Red Tags. This location should be easy to get to for people in your work area. Think P-O-U-S (point of use storage).

We decided to put a 5S Red Tag Holder over by our Assembly Stations. We might recall from the last post, Assembly Station #1 had become a dumping ground. By locating the 5S Red Tag Holder by the Assembly area we hope to accomplish two things: 1) the 5S Red Tags are very convenient for people to grab, fill out and place on an unneeded item, and 2) by having the 5S Red Tag Holder there it visually elevates the importance of 5S Red Tagging; it shows the employees that we are serious about maintaining a productive and efficient 5S program.

3. Take the initiative and go to your supervisor or team leader and request that you hold a short 5S team meeting next week. Possible discussion topics could include:
• Go over the 5S article you found last week with the team and see what they think
• Review your recent 5S Audit scores
• Brainstorm ideas to improve your 5S program
• How can we sustain our gains?
• Share 5S best practices

We have a short team meeting scheduled for Friday. We will be discussing our 5S implementation plan and how we can continue the work we have already started.

4. Read one of those articles that you found last week. Make notes, come up with other ideas and see what you can apply at your organization. Maybe you can use it for your meeting.

I found the article 5S – Shadows Boards Are Bad and Reflection is Good from the Lean is Good blog. It helped us realize that when we decide to use a tool shadow board that it has to make things easier, most efficient and safe; not just look good.

5. Do a quick scan to see if any of your signs, lines or labeling needs to be updated, repaired or replaced. Make a list and give it to the appropriate person or if possible fix it yourself.

We found some floor tape that was not needed anymore. It was primarily a sample of how black & yellow striped vinyl floor tape gets your attention and shows a possible safety hazard. We removed it from the floor and cleaned the area.

So that’s the update for Week 2, let’s move on to Week 3.

Week 3

1. Hold a short 5S team meeting.

2. Check to see if you have all your “Shine” supplies. Does anything need to be ordered or replaced?

3. Look for a new standard to create for the fourth “S” – Standardize.

4. See if there are any opportunities to apply Reward & Recognition to your team or any outstanding individual with regards to your 5S program.

5. Do a 15 minute titivate (to spruce up, to clean, to beautify) before you go home. Get your work area looking nice so you can kick-off next week ready to go.

I hope you have been able to keep up. I know it’s been a challenge on our end. We just have to make time to do it, but the results have been great so far.

Let me know how you are doing or you can make a suggestion for the upcoming weeks 5S Five Things Five Week Challenge.

Best of luck,

Tony

Last week we started a “5S five things to do in five weeks program.” How did it go? How did you do? How would you rate yourself? Were you successful? Just to let you know that I try to practice what I preach, I am participating in this program too. Here are my results:

1. Let’s start off easy. Write down one thing that you would like to accomplish this week regarding 5S. Try to make it something that won’t take too much time, but will still have an impact on your 5S program.

I decided that I wanted to organize and clean up our Assembly Station #1. It had become a dumping ground for stuff. You couldn’t even see the top of the bench.

2. Search on the Internet (if you have access) for information related to 5S. Try to find articles, tips & tricks, or white papers that you think might help your 5S program. We’ll use these later in our program.

I found a post on the “Lean is Good” blog 5S – Shadows Boards Are Bad and Reflection is Good from December 11, 2009. What I liked about the post was that the author Bruce Baker even admitted to making tool shadow boards that might have looked good, but did they really increase productivity?

3. Wipe down your work area and do a quick inspection to see if anything needs fixing, may become broken (if not attended to) or is a safety issue. If you can fix it yourself, great; if not, notify the appropriate person or group.

I was amazed on how much dirt accumulated since the last cleaning. I found small parts that had fallen to floor; I was able to put them back in their correct location.

4. Declare a “Red Tag Day” – make the commitment to find at least five items that don’t belong in your immediate work area, red tag it and move to your 5S Red Tag Holding Area.

I found so many items on our Assembly Area #1 bench that I filled up a medium size box. There were even forms from April and September of last year on the bench. There were other items that I know we can use in the future, but I stuck with the “30-day Rule” – that if it isn’t needed in the next 30 days, red tag it.

5. If you haven’t already, work on that one thing that you wrote down in #1 above. If you have already completed that item, then take a break – you deserve it! Hey, I said we would start off easy. We’ll get to more challenging things later. 

So of course, I spent extra time getting the workbench clean, neat and organized. I even made labels for bins and found a home for each item. This took longer than the 15 minutes I stated earlier in the program, but I was glad I did it.

Now on to this week’s items.

Week 2

1. Check out your 5S Red Tag Holding Area to see if there is anything you can use in your work area. Follow your standards for removing items from the red tag area. Remember only to take something if you truly need it, otherwise you are defeating the purpose of the first “S” Sort. This also helps reduce costs and by recycling items you are helping make Lean Green.

2. Make sure that you have red tags located conveniently in your work area. Have a dedicated home (2nd “S” Set-in-Order) for your 5S Red Tags. This location should be easy to get to for people in your work area. Think P-O-U-S (point of use storage).

3. Take the initiative and go to your supervisor or team leader and request that you hold a short 5S team meeting next week. Possible discussion topics could include:
• Go over the 5S article you found last week with the team and see what they think
• Review your recent 5S Audit scores
• Brainstorm ideas to improve your 5S program
• How can we sustain our gains?
• Share 5S best practices

4. Read one of those articles that you found last week. Make notes, come up with other ideas and see what you can apply at your organization. Maybe you can use it for your meeting.

5. Do a quick scan to see if any of your signs, lines or labeling needs to be updated, repaired or replaced. Make a list and give it to the appropriate person or if possible fix it yourself.

Once again, let’s keep track and see how we do. If you have suggestions for upcoming weeks, feel free to share them.

Thanks for participating in the challenge. – Tony

I’ve been thinking about the Toyota recall lately (I drive one, but it wasn’t affected by the floor mat or gas pedal recall). Of course, I do not know all the information or what happened behind the scenes at Toyota. But what I did notice was something that you probably have heard about how Toyota operates and now you can see it in practice. I heard the phrase “Think slow and act fast” referring to how Toyota addresses situations.

Just think what they were up against. You make the decision to recall all of the cars affected (over 2 million). Now you have to have a plan to fix these cars. And yes, we need the parts to do this. We have to contact the owners. We have to prepare the dealers for the influx of repairs. In the meantime, we will shutdown production. And stop selling those models ofor now. How will this affect our dealers? Our employees? Our customers? Our market share? And on and on and on… Yes there seems to be a lot to think about. And now they have to act.

Time will tell how this will affect Toyota overall. I personally think that they will come out of this stronger than before. They will most likely loose some market share in the meantime. This reminds me of the 1982 Tylenol recall when the decision was made to remove the entire product from the shelves. This was costly, but it was the right thing to do and made the company stronger in the long run. “Tylenol made a hero of Johnson & Johnson.”

Some people will try to use this as an excuse to not pursue Lean. They’re missing the point. This mistake (and it’s a big one) does not mean to scrap your Lean initiatives. It’s a reminder that quality is an essential part of Lean.

For fun, you can watch a clip from The Daily Show with Jon Stewart on the Toyotathon of Death To watch on hulu.com (starts at 1:25) go to:  

To watch video>>The Daily Show  with Jon Stewart –  Toyotathon of Death

You have probably heard the phrase it takes 21 days to break an old habit and 21 days to create a new one. In that spirit, I will be running a series of blog posts over the next five weeks that suggest five things you can do each week to help improve your 5S thinking and actions. These will be little things that you can easily do each week to improve your 5S efforts. Think of this as “Little up, everyday” or practicing kaizen (Japanese for continuous improvement). All told, this should probably take only 5-15 minutes a day. So for only less than an hour a week you can get directly involved in 5S in your work area.

Week 1

1. Let’s start off easy. Write down one thing that you would like to accomplish this week regarding 5S. Try to make it something that won’t take too much time, but will still have an impact on your 5S program.
2. Do a search for information related to 5S. Try to find articles, tips & tricks, or whitepapers that you think might help your 5S program. We’ll use these later in our program.
3. Wipe down your work area and do a quick inspection to see if anything needs fixing, may become broken (if not attended to) or is a safety issue. If you can fix it yourself, great; if not, notify the appropriate person or group.
4. Declare a “Red Tag Day” – make the commitment to find at least five items that don’t belong in your immediate work area, red tag them and move to your 5S Red Tag Holding Area.
5. If you haven’t already, work on that one thing that you wrote down in #1 above. If you have already completed that item, then take a break – you deserve it! Hey, I said we would start off easy. We’ll get to more challenging things later.

I understand that you might not be able to accomplish all these things the first time you try it. Do what you can. If you follow this or something like it, you are starting to apply standardize and sustain to your 5S program.

Let’s keep track of our progress and we’ll see how we do week-to-week.

Good luck and thanks – Tony

You can sign up on twitter at twitter.com/5Ssupply and I’ll send you short reminders each week to help you stay on track.

We at 5S Supply join the world in sorrow over the devastation resulting from the January 12th earthquake in Haiti. Of course, the first inclination was to send a monetary donation but we wanted to try to be a little more creative with a contribution. Seeing that the need is great for any type of supplies and they are in the “supply” business, the thought was to look through our own 5S Red Tag Holding Area and see what could be sent for the relief efforts. We also searched for products from our “Shine” items (the third “S” in 5S) to help with the clean-up.
 
5S Supply will be sending buckets, scrub brushes, sponges, spray bottles, wipes and other items that they hope can make cleaning and rebuilding easier. Director of Customer Care, Jennifer Molski noted, “We have the supplies and sending them to Haiti is a perfect fit. This country had little before this disaster and now they have nothing.”

The team at 5S Supply hopes the modest donation may make a small dent in the clean up efforts. 5S Supply encourages others in the industry to consider sending similar provisions. Every little bit helps. Our prayers and healing thoughts are with everyone affected by this disaster.

I was just on the phone recently with a good friend of mine, John Calabrese from the Arizona MEP (Manufacturing Extension Partnership) Center, while he was at a client and that had this question “Do 5S tags have to be red?”

I have heard this question several times before during 5S Events while performing the first “S” – Sort. Traditionally 5S tags are red. The red color gets your attention that the item may not belong in that immediate work area. You fill out a tag, attach it to the item and move the item to a 5S Red Tag Holding Area. As Hiroyuki Hirano explains it in one of the best books on 5S “5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace”

Why use the color red? First of all, red is conspicuous. Second, red is the color of stoplights. Finally, the Japanese word for “red” also means “dirt.”

This question mostly comes up because a company already uses red tags to identify parts for “QC Hold” or “Reject” and they don’t want to confuse their workers on what a red tag means.

But, back to John’s question, the quick answer is “no”. 5S Red Tags do not have to be red. They could be any color you want. During one 5S Event the company insisted on using 5S Purple Tags so their employees wouldn’t get them confused with their red QC (Quality Control) tags. I thought that this was strange, because they didn’t want their employees to be perplexed about what a red tag stood for. But how would they explain that during Sort they would be using purple 5S Red Tags? Now that sounds confusing to me.

Some organizations use certain color tags to represent specific things. For instance, it is common to see yellow tags for maintenance issues or white tags for safety issues. It is imperative that a company have a standard and stick with it.

The more I wrestled with this, the more bimodal my thoughts became. Should I be thinking “What do I care what color tag they use, as long as they use them effectively?” Or, should I take a stand and say “Hey, it is called 5S Red Tagging for a reason – because the tags are red!”

I would like to know your thoughts on this – Should 5S tags be red?

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I was reflecting on the news of the earthquake in Haiti this week. One of the major things reported was the lack of coordinated relief efforts at this point in time. This made me think back to when I was a young Quality Control Supervisor at a company where my boss, the Director of Operations, put me in charge of our rapid response/disaster recovery cart. The intent was that this cart could be wheeled out and has the items for management to respond to a situation like a spill or other facility emergency.

The first thing I had to do was find out where this cart was located. Being new, I didn’t even know we had one. Secondly, I had to get the key to be able to unlock it. Now with the key in hand and the location of where it was at, I set off to find it to see what I was up against. After going to the area of the building that seldom gets traffic from humans, I located the cart in the corner buried under a pile of stuff. I freed it from its location and brought it to an area which actually had enough light and room for me to go through the cart. The previous “owner” of the cart did me a huge favor because I found an inventory list taped right to the door. What a relief, at least I now know what is supposed to be in there. I emptied the contents of the cart and compared it to the list. Fortunately, most of the items were present. A few items were missing. I was sure I would be able to get those replaced. What I did notice is that there were some walkie-talkies in the kit; but when I tried them the batteries were dead.

So before I really started to focus my life on Lean I can look back now and see that I applied many Lean principles to my thinking. First, I applied 5S to the cart. I went through and sorted things out. Then, I reorganized the items on the cart (Set-in-order) and even found a better location for it that I labeled. I cleaned up the cart and took care of those dead batteries (Shine). I could have stopped there and just have been happy that I found the cart. But I realized that I needed to do a little more. I decided that on a quarterly basis I needed to do a quick check (or audit) of the cart. Making sure everything was there and in good working order (Standardize). At this point the “Sustain” part became easy as long as I followed my standard of checking it quarterly.

My thoughts and prayers go out to all those affected by this tragedy. I know that my 5S cart story woefully pales in comparison to what it happening now in Haiti. It is just a little thought on how 5S can make things easier for us in times of need.

As a corollary to this story, I was at my mother’s house in Florida taking

Repair Crew

care of her after she had hip surgery. That’s when hurricane Charley hit in August 2004. I can admit she wasn’t well prepared for a hurricane; she had moved to Florida a few years earlier from the Midwest and really didn’t think about it. We survived the hurricane o.k. and made the temporary repairs needed to patch up her house. When I returned home I made a kit for her (with recommended items from FEMA) so that she could be better prepared for a hurricane. I remind her in April every year to go and check the kit, make sure everything is there and in good working order.