Shigeo Shingo had a profound impact on my career direction, first as an operating manager and later as a consultant. Shingo encouraged that every means of improvement be understood in context of the goals it was meant to achieve.

“First know-why,” he said, “then know how.”  

Organizations have a bad habit of glamming onto a particular best practice, thinking of it as an end in itself.  “Don’t confuse means and ends,” he said.  Understand why you are employing a particular Lean tool. As such, in 1986 my factory began our Lean journey with a goal of having the right parts at the right time.

What my work history taught me about why 5S matters…

The means we chose were pull production and set-up reduction, both good countermeasures for us. At the time, we were the kings and queens of overproduction – always busy building something, but rarely the right thing for the customers’ needs at the time.

Through pull production, which Mr. Shingo referred to as “authorized” by the customer (as opposed to “speculative”, i.e., built to a forecast), we made some rapid early improvement in customer service. We built smaller batches of components needed for actual customer orders. This freed up machining capacity, shortening lead-times, and improving customer deliveries.

It worked – for a while.

After several months of high service levels, we faced a new reality of part shortages. We “hit the rocks.” That term means just what it sounds like, describing what happens to production flow when the deep river of inventory that covers the problems is depleted.

We’d used up most of our excess inventory, and unless we could drastically reduce machine changeover time, our small batch strategy would not work. So, set-up reduction became the means to a goal of smaller batches. It was at this point, we discovered the critical need for a stable and standardized workplace: 5S.

How 5S stabilized and standardized my factory’s journey…

For the first three years of our lean journey, we’d been unaware of the concept of workplace organization… And it showed. During a site visit by the Shingo Prize in 1989, the Lead Examiner, George Koenigsaecker, commented on the lack of clarity in the workplace:

“You’ve done a nice job with pull systems and even some early changeover attempts, but your folks are having to do this in spite of a cluttered floor, excess equipment, crowded aisles and missing tools.”

A week after the site visit, UPS delivered to me a four-foot cylindrical tube. In it was a very large poster with each of five S’s, expressed in Japanese, but with English translations. Also enclosed was a short note of encouragement and suggestion that “your site will benefit from 5S.”

This was our major take-away from the Shingo site visit:

To produce products just-in-time for the customers required authorized production (triggered by Kanban), which in turn required fast changeover of equipment.

And fast changeover of equipment depended on a stable environment in which everything needed for changeover was immediately available.  This gave a special meaning to 5S: Continuous improvement to workplace organization became the means to faster changeover, effective pull systems, and therefore a much higher degree of just-in-time delivery to our customers.

When I visit companies today, I often see that 5S is the first Lean tool that they have deployed, but that sometimes they are not clear about the purpose. I relate my own 5S story and then ask them why 5S is important to them.

Do you know why it’s important to you?

About Bruce Hamilton

Bruce Hamilton is the President of GBMP.

Bruce is also Director Emeritus for the Shingo Institute, home of the Shingo Prize, and is a Senior Examiner for the Shingo Prize and a Certified Shingo Institute workshops Facilitator. He is a past recipient of the Shingo Prize in both the business and academic categories and an Inductee to the Shingo Academy (with five awards in all). In 2015 he was inducted into the AME Manufacturing Hall of Fame.

Bruce is a sought after speaker concerning management’s role in Lean transformation, noted for his hands-on experience, humor, and insight. His clients have included Raytheon, Beth Israel Deaconess Hospital, OC Tanner, New Balance as well as many smaller organizations.

He is the creator of Toast Kaizen, as well as numerous other award-winning Lean training DVDs including Single Patient Flow and, most recently, Improvement Kata. Bruce is co-author of e2 Continuous Improvement System, a comprehensive learn-by-doing guide for Lean transformation. He publishes a Blog, “OldLeanDude”, about understanding the Toyota Production System and gaining its full benefits. He also and hosts a free monthly webinar called “Tea Time with The Toast Dude”.

Before joining GBMP, Bruce held management positions in Marketing, IT, Operations Management, and General Management. In 1990 led his organization to a Shingo Prize. He is equally at home in administrative, operational and healthcare environments, with over 30 years as a student of Lean. As an early adopter of Lean, his factory was visited by Shigeo Shingo, Shigihiro Nakamura and Ryuji Fukuda. From 1994-1998, he was coached by Hajime Ohba and TSSC.

Bruce holds a B.A. and has attended Bowdoin College and University of Arizona.

The post The Why Behind 5S: The Habits that Create Change appeared first on SafeWork Insider.

Applying 5S Lean Principles

5S is a Japanese-founded method of running a workplace that has a few basic tenets: sort, set in order, shine, standardize, and sustain. Each idea builds on the one before it to improve the workflow in your business. Getting started is as simple as making the commitment to having a better workspace and improving your company’s productivity for the best profit.

1. Sort

5S Lean begins with sorting. This could be a big undertaking depending on the size, nature and current state of your business, but it can also be one of the most fruitful parts of the 5S process. Proper sorting will be the basis for getting organized.

Find the time to go through all materials, inventory and waste in your company. You may need a day to pause the normal operations of the company to allow your staff to focus on this task. In a warehouse environment, the sorting process could look like taking all boxes and bins off your shelves, examining the contents and deciding what’s needed and what’s not.

Of the things you need, create a ledger so you know exactly what you have in stock. Use labels to categorize how each item is used in your operation. For example, you can put a white label on items that are a part of manufacturing and a green label on items that help with delivery. Standard 5S process is to put a red tag (or label) on items that are no longer needed. Leave no item unsorted.

2. Set in Order

Now that everything is cleared out and categorized, you need to put it all in the best order for maximum efficiency. Say you previously kept all supplies of a certain size or material in one area of your business. Now is the time to decide if there is a better way. Should certain items be stored closer to the workstations where they are used the most often? Consider what 5S tool control systems will work best for you.

Asking questions such as this can help you figure out how to make the most of the workspace so your staff can get more done with fewer steps. Move maintenance equipment closer to the machinery it is used to fix, place raw materials in easy reach of workers in the manufacturing department, and only have packing supplies in the areas where orders are prepared for shipment.

3. Shine

As you sort and order your supplies and workstations, give everyone a fresh start by engaging in deep cleaning. Studies show people work better in orderly and tidy spaces. That’s why “shine” is such an important part of the 5S Lean process. Workers will have fewer distractions and feel more comfortable as they go about their tasks.

Get rid of extraneous items that don’t add to the work being done in your space. Clutter can get in the way of people trying to work and lowers morale because it looks less professional. Take the time to clean floors and walls that may have accumulated dirt or dust from machines or the general work process. This will also make it easier to apply new floor tape and signs as you organize the work area.

4. Standardize

Now that you have reordered the workspace, cut down on clutter and disorganization, and placed items in the places where they will be best used, it’s time to make it clear to every member of the company how the new system works.

Start with managers in each department. Make sure they are trained in how the facility flows and understand why certain things have been moved and what their function is. This is also a good time to get feedback about any potential problems with new arrangements. If a person who works more intimately with the production process flags a problem, consider making an adjustment.

Next, all staff should be brought up to date on your system. They should have consistent directions on how to use and store supplies. For instance, if your team is used to dropping shipments from the loading dock in one area but you’ve changed that, make it clear that things will be different. It’s a great idea to have signs made to mark where things should be moving forward.

5. Sustain

To keep all these new changes in place, you need new controls for your company. Once training for current staff is complete, create new onboarding and training materials for anyone who joins the company in the future. Your training should include a walkthrough of the preferred workflow as well as a key that explains all signage displayed in the building.

You must also get the support of your managers and then your staff. They will be used to doing things in certain ways and it can be easy to fall back on certain habits. Make it clear that going back to old ways of doing things will not be tolerated. It may seem harsh, but you can’t sustain your new system if people are undermining it.

Creating an inspection schedule will help keep the new systems in place. Use visual management tools like KPI boards to show progress to all employees. It will be critical to check that things are being done the right way and offer corrections, especially in the first days. This is even more important when it comes to changes that involve safety improvements. Throughout the building, use signs to reiterate proper company protocol so there is no question about what should be done.

Get Started With 5S Lean Now

It may seem like a big undertaking to apply 5S Lean principles in your workplace, but with a few straightforward actions, you can get it done. Sort through equipment and inventory, set it in order where it’s used the most, deep clean, create standard rules and enforce them. In this way, you can improve your operations.

For 5S tools to use in your process – including organization and tool control, floor tapes, visual management, floor tapes, holders and more – visit the 5S store at ComplianceSigns.com.

The post How To Use 5S Lean in the Workplace appeared first on SafeWork Insider.

In our recent State of 5S Report, it was revealed that floor marking is being broadly used for a variety of purposes; from marketing storage and equipment areas to safety purposes.  What we didn’t cover in that session was how to ensure that the floor marking you’re doing is effective and up to snuff.  

Watch David Visco, author of 5S Made Easy and founder of The 5S Store as he discusses how to identify problems with floor tape and what 5S practitioners can learn to improve their own 5S implementations.

In this floor marking webinar, you will learn:

• How to know when it’s time to change floor marking,
• The right floor marking for the right application,
• Common mistakes people make with floor marking.

Transcript from the Floor Marking Help Webinar

Maribeth:

Hello and welcome. Thank you for joining us for today’s webinar, Key Signs Your Floor Marking Needs Help. Now I’d like to introduce our speaker and our special guest today. David Visco is a 5S expert. Beginning in 1985, David launched his career as a warehouse control manager, running a distribution center that managed inventory of over $500 million in value. As he furthered his career, he gained extensive experience across warehouse, production planning, logistics, and materials management. Using 5S in the workplace, he saw a unique opportunity and need for 5S resource.

In 2006, David founded the 5S Store. The first online store dedicated entirely to 5S. The 5S Store provides a massive range of 5S products, free best practices content, and coaching services to thousands of clients. In 2015, his first book 5S Made Easy, was published. Today he frequently speaks publicly on the topic of 5S best practices.

We are also joined today by Jay Forget. Jay is an expert in approaches to safety from his work at ComplianceSigns.com, a compliance and safety company. Since floor marking is often used to help with workplace safety, he’s here today to share some of his perspectives. We’re glad to have you join as a friend of the 5S Store, Jay. From here, I’ll hand it over to David to get us started straight away, David.

David:

Thanks, Maribeth. Thanks for helping us out today, Jay, and thanks for coming everybody. Yeah. So, when it comes to floor markings, it’s one of the top issues that everybody talks to me about, either at trade shows, our clients, or what have you. So, we wanted to help you out today, any way that we can regarding your floor tape. So right off the bat, which of the 5S phases is most used for floor tape? And that would be standardize, right? Because truth be told, that’s where most of the products from our website and what we offer clients comes from. It helps people set in order, whether it be floor tape under fire extinguishers, around pallet jacks, or you name it, or safety signs, floor markings is just huge and it’s a big part of set in order.

Maribeth:

And that brings us to our first key sign. The first key sign that your floor marking needs help is your floor tape isn’t sticking. This is a common problem we hear about at the 5S Store. So, I’ll turn it back to David for some helpful tips.

David:

Thanks. Getting tape to stick, I hear that often. And what we’ve found is a lot of times people aren’t installing their tape properly or they have the wrong tape for their particular area. So, what you have to do right off the bat is choose the right tape. And we’ll show you a tape selection matrix here in a minute, that’ll help you with that. Or you can always call us at the 5S Store, we can help you too. But you need to choose the right tape, which means either getting a porous floor tape or a smooth floor tape, not all tapes are the same. The adhesives aren’t the same and the durability aren’t the same. We made a tape selection checklist to help people select the right tape for their floors.

David:

So, once you’ve picked the right floor tape, you obviously have to wash the floor and dry it, right? But something a lot of people don’t realize is they take their tape, peel off the backing, and press it with maybe their foot or their hand. The problem with that, is that it’s pressure sensitive adhesive that needs to be firmly pressed into the ground for it to stick properly. A lot of folks don’t know that. So, we try and educate people as much as possible on that step. So, you want to go over that tape in the direction that you laid it down with a heavy weight, even the rear wheel of a forklift will work great, if you don’t have a landscape roller or what have you. Tamping tape is a big key.

David:

And right here, we show you the tape selection matrix. So we have a bunch of tapes at the 5S Store and we’ve, over 15 years, have become experts in 5S floor tape. We know which ones work and which ones don’t. So, you don’t have to go searching the internet. That’s what we’re here for. So, this tape selection matrix helps you figure out which tape you need, depending on what kind of floors you have. You can get this on our 5S Blackboard site and download it and use it to your on discretion.

Maribeth:

The second key sign that your floor marking needs help is, people aren’t following the floor markings. This can be frustrating for people who spend so much time planning out the floor markings and putting it in place. So here are some helpful tips. David.

David:

Yeah. So, check this one out here. This is certainly an issue. It was interesting, I took the picture on the left myself and right when COVID hit, I went to Walgreens and there was this crazy markings on the floor on the left there, with blue painter’s tape. And I had a guy right behind me, standing there and somebody standing in the area where all those squigglies are. So I’m like, “What are you doing?” And it occurred to me that wow, these floor signs are not very clear. People had no idea what to do. And even though it was in a retail establishment, still the same lesson, right? Clarity is really important. So on the right side, you can see over time, these floor signs started popping up everywhere and you started seeing them in retail establishments and whatnot.

David:

On the right, people are very clear now that this is where you got to stand because it’s six feet apart and everybody knows six feet is the safe distance. So, when you’re laying floor tape in your facility, make sure it’s crystal clear as to what the expectation is for the behavior that you want people to follow. And if you need to overdo it by putting more floor signs or more tape down or whatever, to make sure people follow the expectation, feel free to do that.

David:

Then on this slide here, we talk about standards. So, a number of places I’ve been into, walk right on the floor and they’ve got various colors of floor tape down. And I ask them, “Do you guys have color standards? Do people know what that…” Actually, this client I went into, had purple tape on the floor. I was like, “Do they know why? What purple is supposed to signify?” And the gentleman said, “No, we just use whatever tape we happen to have handy.” That obviously leaves a huge opportunity for improving the messaging there. What you want to do is make sure that you come up with some kind of standard for what the colors mean for the floor tape. A lot of people use yellow. It’s the most popular tape. A lot of folks will use that for aisles or traffics or even finished goods.

David:

And we have an example here of a system of color guidelines that I’ve used for well over a decade now. You can make your own. People ask me all the time, “David, is there one particular color standard out there for 5S?” And the answer is, “No. There isn’t.” So, you can make it to just suit whatever you need, whatever works for you guys.

David:

And there are many options available as far as materials and different kind of floor tapes, like I had mentioned earlier. And you also need tools to be able to remove floor tape, if need be. But along that way, you want to set up standards for what tapes you’re using. My suggestion would be to set those up on a Kanban, so you just have a very simple rack with various floor tapes, red tags, anything that you need for your 5S program, but particularly in floor tape. And make sure that everybody knows, these are the type of floor tapes that you’re going to use throughout the facility.

David:

Some need to be more heavy-duty than others. So, you could use a cheap $6 vinyl tape for areas where you’re just testing out the set in order, at the moment. And then once you nail that down, you could go to the heavier duty tapes that aren’t going to be removed, that are going to stay put. But you want to make sure you set up a list, so everybody in the company knows which tapes that are going to get used. And if you set it up on a Kanban, you’ll make sure you never run out. Right? Because that’s what Kanbans are for. Yeah. So, with that, I’m curious, Jay, what other floor marking solutions have you seen be effective?

Jay Forget:

Well, thanks David. To amp up the safety factor, for some applications, a different solution makes better sense. I really like the LED projectors because they’re nearly impossible to ignore. I personally walk by one every day, when I walk through our facility and every day it grabs my attention, to remind me to watch out for forklift traffic. So, I most definitely recommend those to our clients where incidents are near misses and a continuous challenge. And rather than a stagnant floor sign, these light projectors can be set to display their message in motion, to improve visibility, thus improving safety. The nice thing is, you can buy one and switch out the messages they project, making them a cost effective investment.

David:

Yeah, those have been great. The demand for these have gone way up because people really like the simplicity of them and the safety aspect.

Jay Forget:

And David, when it comes to ensuring markers are followed, there are other methods to help reinforce your floor marking as well. There are countless types of floor signs preprinted with messages like this one here, watch your step sign, that are available and clearly convey instructions. One that’s overlooked a lot, are the mats. Yeah, they’re a great way to reinforce your safety instructions while also keeping the floors clean. I like them because they’re super durable. And cones, cones are a three-dimensional way to get attention and they come pre-printed with dozens of safety messages already on them. And then, there’s the stanchions and chains that physically prevent passage, making it nearly impossible for people to not follow instructions.

David:

Yeah. That’s super.

Maribeth:

The third and final key sign that your floor marking needs help is that you’ve had incidents. Big or small, nobody wants to see an accident happen, despite the use of floor marking. So, David, let’s begin with talking about OSHA.

David:

OSHA, good old OSHA. They actually don’t have any floor marking guidelines, as far as the colors go. You may see some listings of OSHA colors that they suggest, but they don’t have anything that’s very strict whereas it would be a finding if they came into your building. And I had always thought there was, but I researched and discovered there weren’t, which is kind of cool because you don’t need OSHA giving you trouble about what color your floor tapes are. But they do require, and this is incredibly important, to make sure that you have a three foot of space around electrical panels, like the one on the picture here. And that’s where 5S can really help out because you could set up standards for what tapes you’re going to use for those areas. You could set up standards for what images you might use, et cetera.

David:

There’s all sorts of ways that you can handle that. But keeping that distance either around electrical panels or three feet aisles, is huge. In my day, when I was running warehouses or whatnot, when I took over one particular warehouse, I didn’t even realize there was an electrical panel there. It was buried behind pallets of goods. I’ll never forget that, I was like, “Guys, that’s not cool. That’s really not a good idea.” So, you can even capture this during your audits and whatnot. I see stuff blocking electrical panels all the time, every time I’m at a site. So, it’s something to really keep an eye open for and you can just use safety tape, et cetera, for them.

David:

There’s another example here for improving safety with floor marking. These door swing signs that you see on the right are hugely popular. It’s a very simple idea and solution, but they’re extra durable and they lay down easy. And I don’t know, if you’ve ever seen anybody get hit with a door in an aisle. There was one client that I worked at years ago, where there was this one big, massive aisle and the doors all opened into the aisle. So as people walking by, they were literally just walking into the doors when people opened them up. We put these in place and it was really great. And then, the fire extinguisher sign you see there. So, we have multiple kits depending on what type of safety incident you’re trying to avoid. We have an eyeglass station and a shower one, and electrical panel. So, those really come in handy when you’re trying to improve safety with floor marking.

David:

And this has always been one of my most favorite pictures. I think we’ve had this for over 10 years and it might be on one extent, that there’s signs all over the place here, but it’s more just to show ideas and to keep in mind that intersections in a warehouse or in a manufacturing floor, can be highly dangerous. And people aren’t always paying attention, so having various floor signs like this, or even the LED one we showed you earlier, can really help improve safety.

David:

Something else, there was a client here actually in Devens in Massachusetts, where they were making solar panels and they would get in multiple pallets a day. I think it was two or three trailers a day of glass for the panels. And we didn’t have a really good way of organizing them. So, the guys came up with this and laid it out nice and neat. And although it’s not in the picture, there’s a nice sign there that says, “Incoming glass,” hanging from the ceiling and very simple floor markings to help keep that in order.

David:

Then one idea that you might want to consider and it doesn’t have to be at the beginning of the year, it can be whenever you have time, is to do a floor marking blitz, and go through and remove all your old worn tape. We have floor scrapers for that, that work really well. Funny story I’ll share with that though. I was at one client and they had laid down some tape that we had suggested they use and whatever. And I was there checking things out and we’d given them a floor scraper, one of the heavy duty ones. And they were using it on their old vinyl tape because a lot of people use vinyl, but vinyl tape is so painful to remove. So, the best way to do it is with a heavy-duty floor scraper.

David:

And they were using the scraper. However, it wasn’t working. Now, we took a look at it and I tried using it too and I’m like, “What the heck is going on?” It turned out there was actually, on the blade, there was a protector piece over that. So, we were trying to remove the tape with the damn blade covered. It was so funny. Once you have the blade exposed, those floor scrapers work extremely well for removing 5S of yesterday, which I see on floors all the time, and it’s really too bad. So, if you’re going to start a new floor tape campaign, you want to remove everything that you can. And then, when you’re laying down the new tape, you want to follow your tape guidelines and whatnot that we discussed earlier and make sure the standards are in place.

David:

And really, the 5S team, if you have a team, you do have a team, right? If you have a team, those folks should work with facilities and whatnot, to figure out what tapes are best for that plant. You can certainly take a look back at our tape selection guide, but make sure everybody’s on the same page with what tapes you’re picking. Because some of those tapes are rather pricey, you don’t want to buy something then have to deal with returning it because there’s some reason why you shouldn’t be using it. So, make sure everybody’s on the same page. And if you have any questions, of course, you could call us. So yes, you want to create the standardized materials sheet I talked about, and the Kanban, and get that all going. And then, make sure to communicate to everybody, if you make changes to this, make sure everybody knows what the new standards are. Jay, what are your thoughts?

Jay Forget:

Well, thanks David. I always say if you had an incident, I wouldn’t be surprised if it was a slip and fall situation. I mean, slips are a loss of balance caused by too little friction between your feet and the surface you walk or work on. Loss of traction is the leading cause of workplace slips. And it’s always good to remember that slips can be caused by wet surfaces, spills, weather hazards like ice or snow. And they’re more likely to occur when people are in a hurry, running, wearing the wrong kind of shoes or don’t pay attention to where you’re walking. I mean, we’ve all seen this happen. But there are some things that you can do to help prevent slipping and on the screen are a couple of my favorites. Basically, what you see here are anti-slip strips that make strips and stairways safer, reducing the risk of slip and fall accidents in your workplace.

Jay Forget:

Most of them come as self-adhesive strips. They just adhere to any clean, dry surface, including metal, wood, and concrete. The surface is aluminum oxide grit, bonded to a vinyl substrate, making them gritty and increasing friction to reduce the slipping. They’re super easy to apply. Just peel and stick. As you can see, there are ones that are printed with messages and colors as well. They’re indoor or outdoor. So, you can put them pretty much anywhere that people could slip, and they come in sizes that fit on a standard size stair tread, meaning you can place them on stairs as well. So, these are definitely recommended if you have some staircases in or outdoors.

David:

Yep. I’ve seen them used a lot these days. They’re fantastic.

Jay Forget:

Lastly, we can’t forget about this area here, David. I mean, this is the low lit areas. Because low-light situations can lessen the effect of floor tape, there is reflective colored safety tape that helps to identify hazards or mark vehicles, so they’re visible in low light. It’s available in solid or striped designs and colors. These rolls of reflective tape include pressure sensitive adhesive with a liner, just peel and stick. This type of tape is commonly used to identify safety hazards as well as vehicles and traffic applications and can be used inside or outside. If you have holes, walls, fences, or inventory and low light conditions.

Jay Forget:

It’s definitely a good idea to play some reflective tape at headlight level. This reflected light will grab a drivers’ attention and help prevent damage from forklifts or vehicles. Then there’s the motion-activated flasher, which I know is another great one, David, I know is one of your favorites. It’s basically a flashing safety sign. That’s programmed to flash when pedestrians or forklifts are entering the area which triggers the motion sensor. The images can be customized to match your exact safety situation, which means you can always get what you need. Well, Maribeth, David, as you can tell, there are a lot of ways beyond floor marking, to help keep a safe work environment.

David:

No doubt there are.

Maribeth:

Thanks Jay, for that added insight. And thank you to our viewers for submitting so many great questions. Those of you who have outstanding questions, now’s the time to get them in using the Q&A function that is at the bottom of your screen. If you don’t see Q&A right there, just click the three buttons that say, “More,” under it, and you can type in your question there. We’re going to work to get through all of those today. So, let’s get started with our first question. So this one is probably good for David, I’m thinking. And so, our participant sent, “I know sometimes floor tape wears out. What are some of the ways that can be prevented, or things you can do to extend the life of the tape that you have in place?

David:

That’s a great question. So first of all, like I mentioned earlier, you want to make sure you have the right tape in the right place. But even if you have the right tape in the right place, sometimes what happens is warehouse workers will drag pallets. And when you drag pallets, you tend to tear up floor tape. So it’s actually an OSHA guideline whereby they shouldn’t be dragging pallets. They should have pallets picked up, I think it’s a quarter of an inch or up to two inches. I don’t remember the exact guideline, but you should not be dragging pallets. When people do that, they tear up even the best of floor tapes, even if it’s laid down properly.

David:

Yeah. So, you want to make sure that you’ve got the right tape and in the right spot, and that should work just fine for you over time, but make sure you train people properly on what tape to use. Something else that you can do is, on our lower profile tapes, that aren’t as thick as the heavy duties. One thing I suggest people do is, let’s say they’re using two inch width on their solid stripe tape, and it’s getting banged up once in a while for various reasons. Well, you could put a clear three inch wide overlay, over that tape. So, you could buy a three inch width roll of clear, and a two-inch width of the colored tape and you put the clear over the solid tape. And that helps really keep it clean and helps to keep it longer lasting

Maribeth:

Great tips, David. Thanks. So our next question, Jay, I think this one’s for you. So, I have somebody here asking about that flashing light sign. And the question is, “How far away does the motion need to be for that sign to begin flashing?”

Jay Forget:

Thanks, Maribeth. That’s a great question. And when we do hear that often, that same question. The flashing signs actually have an infrared motion detector that detects motion up to 18 feet away. And it comes with a controller, so you can set the flashing to your liking or dynamic flashing. And another key benefit to this solution is that it’s simple to set up and it has the flexibility to be moved around easily. So, if layouts or intersections change over time, it’s an ideal solution.

Maribeth:

Great. Thank you, Jay. Our next question is back to the 5S topic. So David, this one’s for you. “Is there a particular person on the 5S team that should be taking care of the floor markings?”

David:

That’s an interesting question actually, because really nobody on the team should be doing the floor marking, although I’m not sure if that’s what the question referred to, either doing it or just managing the inventory for it. So, I’ll attack both of those. As most lean practitioners know these days, that when you’re implementing lean, including 5S as a part of that, you’re never supposed to do a . So, in other words, the managers or people on a team aren’t necessarily supposed to lay down the tape, organize the area, cut out the tool foam. That should all be done by people in the area. So make sure, especially with floor tape, and I’ve seen this done wrong so many times, where facility managers or facility staff or even engineers or the 5S team, will lay out a whole area of floor tape and they’ll get down on their hands knees and lay the tape out, and they’ll do all the hard work.

David:

The problem is when you go to sustain that type of thing, if the people in the area who are responsible for everything that goes on in that area, if they weren’t part of the taping and getting down on their hands and knees and really installing it, they’re not going to sustain it when they maybe tear it up because of a dragged pallet or something, or they notice some tape needs to be replaced. They’re not going to care. They really won’t because they’re not vested in it. So, as far as floor tape goes, make sure that the right people are doing the installation. As far as managing inventory levels and making sure that the right tapes are being used, the 5S team along with the facility group should handle that.

Maribeth:

Great advice. Here’s another 5S-oriented question. So this one is in reference to 5S audits. And so, the question is actually a couple parts, first, “Do you recommend including a review of floor marking as part of a 5S audit and how often should you do it and what are the best practices?”

David:

That’s a good question. They should certainly be part of your set in order phase of your 5S audits, as should the color coding for the standardize part of your audit. So, you want to make sure that people are following the right standards of the color floor markings, assuming you have those in place. Yeah. And who should be doing it? Well, I generally suggest that the 5S team will go out and do an audit or somebody within that team. And they’ll always go around with people in the department. The worst thing you want to ever see done is just an auditor come in, audit the area, turn around and leave. That’s not what it’s about. The audit’s all about communication and making sure that everybody’s on the same page with what the standards are and what’s expected and people give ideas and whatnot. It isn’t supposed to be a quick pass through, by any extent.

Maribeth:

And a last minute question here and I think both of you are well-equipped to answer this one. So, “How often do you see people using floor signs and floor tape together as a solution?”

David:

I can tell you from my perspective. Yeah, thanks Jay. All the time. And they’re not only using floor tape, they’re also using pallet corner markers, in T markers and Xs to mark off where a bunch of pallets might be lined up. But rarely do I see a place that has floor tape, not have floor signs. A lot of people using floor signs as well. The most popular are the trash can sign or the, be aware of a forklift sign. So, that’s what I’ve seen. How about you, Jay, any input there?

Jay Forget:

Well, I couldn’t agree more. I mean, usually when someone is looking to stock up on their floor marking tape, they’re absolutely including floor signs. Whether it’s the anti-slip grips or on-the-wall signs or floor signs, but it’s definitely the signage and the tape together. Yeah, absolutely.

Maribeth:

Great. Thanks, guys. Thank you to our audience for the thoughtful questions.

The post Key Signs your Floor Marking Needs Help appeared first on SafeWork Insider.

Is your company on track to meet its goals this year? If you’re like most companies, you’re probably still struggling to regain your momentum after the upheavals of 2020. You may be looking at what you can cut, add, or tweak to ensure that this year is a success. 

The good news is, as a 5S-practicing company, you have what you need to end the year on a high note. 5S employs many tools that can help you get back on track, but none are more essential to sustainable success than the 5S team.

The 5S team is directly responsible for fostering a company culture that champions continuous improvement.

Members of the 5S team serve as examples for 5S standards. They are guides for the 5S process and ensure employees receive valuable 5S training.

More specifically, the 5S team:

• Drives: It provides the momentum for and supports 5S implementation.
• Teaches: It educates and coaches employees.
• Sets the bar: It sets 5S standards across the company and coaches along the way.
• Provides checks and balances: It supports 5S audit activity.
• Defines: It helps to define 5S materials (for 5S training, implementation, and maintenance).
• Amplifies: It helps to communicate (and celebrate!) 5S progress.

The 5S team plays a vital role in the effectiveness of your 5S initiative. So, strengthening your 5S team means strengthening your company.

How do you assess how well your 5S team is functioning? Consider these questions:

• Is your 5S team actively working to maintain forward momentum and progress in the company? 
• Is your workforce well-informed of 5S standards and processes? 
• Are employees engaged in paths toward continuous improvement?

If your answer to any of these questions is a no, don’t worry! You’re not alone.

A recent survey of 5S-practicing companies shows that many of them put 5S on the back-burner this past year. Yet our report also shows that 5S practices specifically address the issues brought up by our recent crisis by focusing on eliminating waste and doing more with less.

5S Team Motivation

By revitalizing your 5S program and strengthening your 5S team, you will be on track to end the year by meeting or exceeding your goals.

Your 5S initiative could be struggling right now for many reasons. Maybe there is no enforced strategy for assigning responsibilities, resources, or timelines. Or all the tasks required to sustain 5S have been placed on the shoulders of the 5S lead. Maybe employees haven’t bought into the 5S standards because the 5S team has not set up a system of accountability. 

Whatever the reason, our 5S team implementation guide can help you shore up points of weakness and revive your 5S program.

Use these tips to strengthen your 5S team:

Divide up team responsibilities

The 5S program is too complex for one person to implement and sustain. If you are not sure how to break up the responsibilities, consider using S.O.A.R. to know what to focus on.

Give your 5S team a facelift

Avoid talent waste by recruiting new members regularly. New members offer fresh perspectives, and changing out the members brings more people on board with the 5S standards. Ensuring that employees feel valued and involved empowers them to make meaningful change.

Your 5S team should consist of employees from all areas affected by 5S implementation. Including people from all aspects of the workplace helps ensure communication and maintenance of 5S standards across the board. It also helps to generate buy-in and support.

The 5S lead oversees the entire 5S initiative, but also be sure to include representatives from:

• Safety, to ensure that safety is always at the forefront of changes being made.
• Facilities, to support equipment movement, painting walls and equipment, hanging signage from ceilings, floor prep, etc.
• Department managers, to keep departments engaged by making 5S part of the daily routine.
• Group leads, to hold department members accountable and lead by example by practicing 5S daily – vital to 5S success!
• Front line workers, to ensure they have a voice and are involved, which helps to build support for the 5S initiative.
• Human Resources, to ensure the onboarding process includes 5S training and to support company-wide behavioral change.

Conduct a baseline 5S audit

Get a good picture of your company at this moment so that you can identify areas of weakness and accurately measure improvement. The purpose here is not to get people in trouble. Rather, focus on how things can be improved. Most importantly, talk to employees and listen to their feedback and ideas. Click here for tips on conducting useful 5S audits. 

Hold regular team meetings.

A set schedule for team meetings helps to maintain momentum for the 5S initiative. Use the time to discuss what is working, what isn’t, and how it can be improved. Be sure to follow up on action items from the previous meeting to hold everyone accountable.

Create or refresh your Team Charter.

A charter sets clear expectations for team members so that everyone is on the same page.

Incorporate team-building activities.

The right activities can increase engagement and build trust between team members. A quick internet search brings up a wealth of ideas for teams of all kinds – small, large, and even remote! Here are a few ideas to get you started:

• A scavenger hunt
• An egg toss challenge
• A Nerf battle
• An office trivia game
• Board games, card games, and video games
• Out-of-the-office meetups
• Ice-breaker activities like sharing your bucket lists, “Weekend in a Word,” or “Two Truths and a Lie.”

The 5S team is essential for promoting the cultural mindset shift necessary to create lasting change. Get to work strengthening your 5S team now so that you can make the most of these last two quarters of the year. Your goals are attainable and sustainable, one small improvement at a time.

The post Your 5S Team: The Secret to Boosting Efficiency and Meeting Your Productivity Goals appeared first on SafeWork Insider.

What is the state of 5S in 2021? David Visco discusses or in-depth survey…

In late 2020, The 5S Store commissioned important research. Our goal with the study was to establish benchmarks for what successful implementation of 5S and Lean Manufacturing look like across companies of all sizes and industries. With responses from nearly 150 companies that leverage 5S, we’ve learned quite a bit about how companies are running their 5S efforts.  

Join David Visco, author of 5S Made Easy and founder of The 5S Store as he discusses the survey findings and what 5S practitioners can learn from the data to improve their own 5S implementations.

In this webinar, you will learn:

• How 5S implementations are performing vs. previous years
• What industries are having more success than others and why
• What companies are doing well and where they’re missing the mark
• What are the most popular tools and approaches being used

Transcripts from the State of 5S Webinar

Maribeth Ross:

Hello. Thank you for joining us for today’s webinar, The State of 5S in 2021, What’s Happening Now. Before we get started today, we have a few housekeeping items. The hashtag for our webinar is #stateof5S. Feel free to post insights using this hashtag on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and be sure to tag us. You may also ask questions via the chat or the Q and A capability anytime during the presentation.

Maribeth Ross:

At the end of today’s program, we’ll attempt to answer all of the questions. But if your question isn’t answered today, someone will follow up with a response after the webinar. Today’s session is being recorded and it will be sent to you following the presentation for your own purposes or to share with others. Now I’d like to introduce our speaker. David Visco is a 5S expert. Beginning in 1985, David launched his career as a warehouse control manager, running a distribution center that managed inventory of over $500 million in value.

Maribeth Ross:

As he furthered his career, he gained extensive experience across warehouse, production planning, logistics, and materials management. Using 5S in the workplace, he saw a unique opportunity and a need for a 5S resource. In 2006, he founded the 5S Store, the first online store dedicated entirely to 5S. The 5S store provides a massive range of 5S products, free best practices content, and coaching services to thousands of clients.

Maribeth Ross:

In 2015, his first book 5S Made Easy was published. Today, in addition to his role at the 5S Store, he frequently speaks publicly on the topic of 5S best practices. I’m Maribeth and I’ll be your moderator today, presenting the results of the 5S survey and posing your questions to David for discussion over the next 60 minutes. We have a lot to cover, so let’s get started.

Maribeth Ross:

I’d like to begin by explaining our survey methodology. Last fall, we put a comprehensive survey out to companies of all sizes the globe over. Our team worked with industry experts to create this comprehensive survey, and our intent was to produce a detailed picture of the current state of lean with a specific focus on 5S. The responses to the survey were anonymous, but I can tell you that the respondent’s titles included titles such as production lean manager, TMP and lean manager, quality manager, director of operational excellence, and CI program managers. So very applicable responses there.

Maribeth Ross:

When we take a peek at the demographics, we had 142 companies respond. Most of them, 73%, were from the private sector, and 23.7% from the public sector. What we saw was a wide range of company sizes. So 60% of respondents came from companies that employ between 105,000 people. About 10% of the companies that were represented in the survey are greater than 10,000 employees. Participating companies came from 21 different industries, which you could see on the screen there, encompassing many types of manufacturing and processing businesses. You can see the spread there in that chart.

Maribeth Ross:

Let’s talk about 5S in 2020. One of the questions that we asked was how would you describe your organization’s 5S initiative in 2020? Our major takeaway from that was that about 50% of the respondents say that their 5S programs were formal, actively implemented and communicated. What that represents to us is a huge opportunity for companies to further incorporate 5S as a key tool to expand and improve their lean initiatives.

Maribeth Ross:

56% of respondents said that they indicate 5S was less of a priority right now. 54% of respondents indicate that their 5S program regressed in 2020. So that led us to ask, well, how did the pandemic affect your 5S implementation? And asked specifically about this. 56% of respondents indicated that 5S was less of a priority during the pandemic. Further, 54% of respondents indicated that in the first question, that their program had regressed as a result of that.

Maribeth Ross:

And so, the story that tells is an opportunity for improved 5S implementation in 2021. So let’s start there, David. Talk to me about your thoughts, about how 5S work and our experience with COVID go hand in hand.

David Visco:

Yeah. Thanks, Maribeth. Hi everybody. Yeah. I mean, when you think about it, 5S isn’t about cleaning and organizing. That might be the result, but also it’s all about changing behaviors for the better. I think when COVID all of a sudden showed up on our doorstep, there were a lot of changes that needed to happen. Behaviors needed to change left and right. All of a sudden, we found we had to be wearing masks. We had to be looking for signs all over the place on where we could stand. It was really completely different.

David Visco:

If you look at 5S, what happened was, all of a sudden, people were starting to use 5S and they didn’t even know it, like setting up standards, standard ways to enter a building, standard places where you could sit at a restaurant or whatnot. So it really had a huge implication all over the place. And then even in shine, all new behaviors there too.

David Visco:

Like a doctor’s office I was in, there were seats that are marked off that you can’t sit in. They give you a placard, so you’ve got to go sit down, hold the placard in. And then, when you get up, you put a sign down on the chair as a signal that that chair is now contaminated. So what they have to do, they need standards in place for how, okay, somebody has got to go out and clean the chair. So it really did cross over from manufacturing and everywhere else. I was seeing 5S everywhere and most people weren’t even aware of it.

Maribeth Ross:

So true. I would love to put out a poll to our audience, based on what we were just talking about. What’s your company’s approach to 5S in 2021. There’ll be three multiple-choice answers that pop up for you to respond. The first is we are prioritizing 5S more in 2021 than 2020. The second is 5S is a priority this year, same as last year. And the third choice is we are prioritizing 5S less in 2021 than we did in 2020. If you’d take a moment to answer this poll, we’ll be able to pop the responses right back up on the screen and take a look at what the experience is from the audience.

Maribeth Ross:

Great. If you could finalize your responses now, we’ll get the results up on the screen. Okay. What we see here is mixed results. It looks like a little more than half of the folks who chose to respond to this are prioritizing 5S more in 2021 than 2020. A little less than half say it’s about the same priority level as last year. And no respondents said that they were prioritizing 5S less. So that sounds like a really good thing.

Maribeth Ross:

Let’s move on. Use of 5S. We asked the audience if they employ 5S methodology to complement their lean implementation, and overwhelmingly, they said yes. In fact, when we asked them about all the different tools that they use in their lean implementation, 5S was the most popular lean tool. Interestingly, over half of the surveyed companies report shifting their primary focus away from 5S in 2020. And we think, what David said, it’s surprising because 5S is uniquely suited to help meet the ongoing crisis and all of the things that we need to do to deal with the pandemic.

Maribeth Ross:

The shift seems to indicate that 5S practices are not widely understood or being fully implemented. And we’re going to double click into a lot of these different things in detail. But I’d like to start with high level. David, what do you make of that?

David Visco:

That’s a great question. It was interesting to see this number, particularly the 50% that have shifted away from 5S last year. The more I thought about it, is there shouldn’t be anything to shift away from. 5S is supposed to be just the way you do things. Just like when you brush teeth at the end of the day before you go to bed or whatnot, it’s not even a habit. It’s just automatic. And that’s what 5S is supposed to be.

David Visco:

We keep making it this thing that has action items, and due dates, and almost handle it like a project. If 5S was truly implemented at these places as it’s supposed to be, there wouldn’t be any change at all because there’d be nothing to change. It was just the way they were always doing things. I thought that was very interesting, the number dropped as much as it did.

Maribeth Ross:

Me too. This is a bit of an i-chart on your screen here, and I apologize for that. But it’s a lot of data in one view, and I’ll walk you through the story here. We asked our survey participants to rate how effective they were on essentially the 5S’s. We asked them to answer based on a five-point Likert scale. And so, when we looked at this, it’s pretty clear where implementations go awry with 5S.

Maribeth Ross:

Sustain appears to be the step that people self report the most challenges with. Conversely, respondents overall felt pretty good about their ability to put standards in place, so standardize. But it seems like there’s room for improvement on just about everything. So we’re going to spend the next several slides moving into more detail on individual activities related to 5S, and we’ll start with red tagging.

Maribeth Ross:

An overlooked tool in terms of our responses from the survey is red tag events. Red tag events, as you know, are a fundamental part of the sorting process, and they serve to efficiently eliminate waste. About a quarter of respondents are not holding red tag events. And so, they’re missing an opportunity to quickly and efficiently create a less cluttered environment, and more productive workspace.

Maribeth Ross:

43% have done the events and they’ve moved items into a red tag zone, but only 33% are doing this at what we deem best practice level, where they’re conducting the events and then ultimately disposing of, or reusing the items that are red tagged. David, I’d like to push this one over to you. What are your thoughts on use of red tagging?

David Visco:

Yeah, that was interesting that almost a quarter of the respondents don’t even do red tagging. I find that rather interesting because, in the very beginning part of launching 5S as it is these days, most people start with sort. They would have an event and clear out their area and whatnot. So it’s been the foundation or the starting piece of 5S. There’s no reason not to have an event. Have fun with it. Announce it, bring in pizza, food. Just go to town and clean up that area that you’re addressing left to right, top to bottom, and get all the stuff out that you don’t need to do your job.

David Visco:

It’s funny. I was at a client recently, and a rather large manufacturing facility. Truth be told, they were just starting to do 5S audits. And I was like, “Well, have you guys even put in place the red tagging yet?” And they hadn’t. I knew they hadn’t because the area was really in quite disarray. So I’m like, “Well, don’t you think you need to maybe sweat out the red tags first?” And don’t forget, you also need to implement some standards so that you can audit against something.

David Visco:

So it’s funny that even people don’t get started on the red tag part of things, because it should be the beginning of the whole process, and just have fun with it. Oh, I wanted to add some tips with starting a red tag process, is if you have a team, hopefully you have 5S team, it’d be good to give the management of the red tag system to one person. It doesn’t all have to fall on the 5S lead. And then always make sure you have red tags. So maybe set up a little Kanban for that, and don’t ever run out. Yeah, that’s it for red tags.

Maribeth Ross:

Thanks, David.

David Visco:

Yep.

Maribeth Ross:

Let’s take a peak at set in order. For the set in order phase, we asked about the activities that the respondents partake in. The majority of the companies surveyed, nearly 62%, are most frequently choosing to label items and label the workspace. Only 45% have eliminated unnecessary items. That shows the under-utilization of the red tag tool as we talked about. But other best practices, rather, that helped organize the workplace seemed to be used by 40% or less of the respondents.

Maribeth Ross:

For example, 40% of the respondents use before and after photos for a tangible measure of improvement over time. 38% evaluate true use of items, and only 21% list their essential items and their location, so that time isn’t lost or wasted in tracking those items down. David, let’s talk a little bit about the set in order phase and why it’s so important.

David Visco:

Sure. Thanks. There’s a lot of different reasons, but two in particular come to mind. One is all the set in orders that I’ve done through the years with folks and when it was a regular employee and whatnot, when you have that set in order phase, everybody should be getting together and helping and coming up with ideas on how to improve the flow, how to improve everything that’s going on in that area. If it’s done that way, it just builds morale. People start taking ownership of their area, and certainly of 5S because they’re done on the hands and knees laying tape where they were part of cleaning it up and figuring out what would work better than the way it had been.

David Visco:

So it just helps with the whole team building part of it. Also, once you’re done with the 5S, set in order, the place is just going to look amazing. Who doesn’t want to work in a better looking area in a place that’s just so visual and just pops. The benefit of that, of course, is if you have visual controls laid out here and there, like floor tape or whatnot, or Kanbans on the table, or whatever. People are going to know exactly what’s expected of them to do next.

David Visco:

It helps with the flow of everything, which just makes it a much better atmosphere, better place to work. And the workers then, they know that they’re appreciated and they feel like they’re actually adding value.

Maribeth Ross:

Thanks, David.

David Visco:

Sure.

Maribeth Ross:

Let’s move on to color coding. We asked, to what have you employed color coding standards, and select all that apply. About 41% of respondents indicated that they color code only some items. Over 13% don’t use color coding at all. David, I know you’re of the position that color coding is vital for standardizing because it creates a tangible system for measuring the behaviors that are required for continuous improvement.

Maribeth Ross:

But let’s look at the rest of the numbers here. We color code some items such as cleaning and material handling tools. That was 42%. We have extended our color coding to accessories such as bins, clipboards, tapes, document holders. Tools, that was 47%. To help keep things organized, we matched the color of tools and storage areas. That was 38%. And we reinforce 5S color coding with training, labels, signs, and posters, was about 40%. And as I mentioned, 13% said, “We’re not using color coding at all.” David, can you expand for us on your thoughts of the importance of color coding?

David Visco:

Yeah. I think color coding is one of the easiest things that you can do to change the behaviors, which is really what the whole point of this is, in the long run. A common example is, people’s cleaning tools are missing. You’re sitting there trying to do your job, and you can’t find… At the end of the day, you’re cleaning up or whenever, you can’t find your broom, you can’t find the dust pan. You have no idea where it is. So what do you do? You start chasing around looking for people.

David Visco:

Then you find it in somebody’s area. You might get a little bent that that person had taken your stuff, etc. That type of thing really starts to boil over after a while. I was literally at a facility last week where I saw that happening. It was crazy. The idea of color coding in that instance is you take every zone, maybe there’s half a dozen zones in a building, or however it’s broken up. You break the place up, give it a zone, give every zone a certain color. And that color is going to coordinate with maybe the barrels, push broom, the dust pan, the hand broom, whatever you might need to tie it all together.

David Visco:

You might have a green area or a blue area, and all the tools have those colors. You can even get tool shadow boards that are made specifically for the tools. You could put them on a mobile rack or against the wall. And you made sure that the board is the color that matches the tools and the area. It tightens everything up and makes everything look a heck of a lot better. And people will know when their tools are…

David Visco:

Like if I went and grabbed somebody else’s tool that I shouldn’t have, I’m going to know I did something wrong and that I really shouldn’t. So that’ll start to decrease that happening. And it’ll open people’s eyes up to, “Geez, what is going on? Why are we missing this?” At the end of the day, that’s the goal, is to figure out, what’s triggering my tool? And it could be any tool. Doesn’t have to be a push broom. But what’s triggering it to disappear?

David Visco:

Somebody obviously is trying to do their job and they can’t. So they go off and look for the missing tool and whatnot. You could tighten things up a lot with color coding. I’ve also seen people use like Plasti Dip, which is some way you can dip the handles of the tools in, and it gives it a color, whatever you chose to make it, and you can match that to the shadow boards.

David Visco:

You can have a tool shadows on a peg board and make it the same color as the zone and the same color as the handle on the tools. So you can really go to town with color coding, to help pull in everything together.

Maribeth Ross:

Some great advice there, David. Let’s take a peak at shine. We asked, which of the following are you doing to ensure your shine efforts are on point? This was a question where they could select all that apply. Essentially, the shine phase looked like it could be better implemented across the board, particularly considering the current pandemic. But when workers know that their safety is prioritized, they can focus more on the quality and the efficiency of their work.

Maribeth Ross:

Digging into the data, surprisingly only 54% of respondents indicated that requiring frequent cleaning and inspections was part of what they do. Not quite 47% assign cleaning tasks, and 40% keep photographs of equipment in areas for reference of what good looks like. There were other essential shine tools that seem to be used by less than 40% of the respondents, including only 37% have a method for communicating the findings during cleaning, to identify problem areas.

Maribeth Ross:

36% keep a list of equipment that needs to be shined, so that nothing is overlooked. Only 33% use a shine schedule so that no area or piece of equipment gets overlooked. 22% hold people accountable to the schedule that they have in place in order to build a sense of ownership. While health and safety standards have definitely shifted dramatically across the globe, the 5S system provides companies with proven methods to rise to that challenge, as we talked about earlier.

Maribeth Ross:

So the shine phase of 5S implementation could be considered more important now than ever before. David, I know you have a position on how to do shine right. What are your key takeaways for the audience here?

David Visco:

Yeah. When I think of shine, I don’t think of just cleaning, but most people do. They just think that, well, that just means I’m going to clean my equipment. Well, really the idea behind the shine step is to make sure that it’s so clean that when there’s any kind of non-conformity, or breakage, or a leak, or what have you, it’s obvious. So anybody could just go by and see if something’s not quite right.

David Visco:

Let’s take, for example, a piece of equipment. I’ve seen this, certainly. It could be just filthy. That thing’s been there for 20 years and it’s just dirty, rotten. And for all you know, it could be leaking like a sieve. But you can’t even see where the leak is coming from because it’s so dirty as it is. You take that piece of equipment and clean it up and whatnot, then that’ll make any of those leaks very obvious. And then you could get back to fixing the problem, which is the whole goal in the first place, is to make sure that the equipment is running when it needs to, people can do their job, get their widgets out the door, etc., etc.

David Visco:

To see such a small number of folks actually have a schedule that they hold people accountable to is surprising to me. I think there’s a ton of opportunity there, because, again, if you’re doing shine the right way, you’re going to improve things tenfold. It’s just so much benefit to it. So why not get everybody involved by giving them a certain section? One example would be if it happens to be a warehouse, give everybody a certain amount of aisles that they’re responsible for.

David Visco:

If it’s a manufacturing process, certain people should be responsible for certain pieces of equipment. It should also make its way down to any of the other set in order phases. Let’s say, if you’re laying out for a table, marking where barrels supposed to go, in the shine phase, that should be marked out properly. There could be times where the barrels are just thrown all over the place and not put back anywhere in particular. That’s where shine and set in order tie together. So there’s a ton of uses for it. But I’d suggest using it just to make non-compliance more visual.

Maribeth Ross:

Thanks, David. Let’s move on to sustaining. The question that we posed to the audience was, in order to sustain your 5S efforts, do you… And we provided them with a multiple-choice list, of which they could choose any, as many as they needed to. Overall, when it comes to sustaining 5S, we saw a really interesting pattern in the data, with under-utilization of some of the more effective methods that we see for sustaining 5S.

Maribeth Ross:

The majority of the survey respondents, 87% indicated that they are using 5S. Yet only 50% said that it was formal and systematized, as we talked about at the beginning. Just only over 60% of respondents indicated that they offer 5S training for their employees. This is a key component to creating a sustainable 5S program. So there’s definitely room for growth in this area, and there were other 5S best practices for sustainability that were also under-utilized.

Maribeth Ross:

We saw that only about 43% of respondents are conducting audits. Just over 42% of respondents have a designated leader for 5S. About 47% of respondents conduct regular department meetings, 5S meetings, meaning that more than half don’t. And roughly 46% of respondents say that they enforce accountability across the team. David, I know that sustain is a really passionate topic for you. So let’s talk about what’s going wrong here.

David Visco:

Yeah. It’s interesting that the number of audits that are being conducted are so low. That’s one of the easiest methods to put in place, that we tend to make a lot more difficult. But it really doesn’t need to be. What you measure is what you’re going to improve. So if you’re truly implementing 5S and other lean tools to try and improve matters, why not use an audit so that you can check how things are going? Stay on top of everything, get everybody involved.

David Visco:

What I find happens too often, unfortunately, with audits is that they’re done in a vacuum. Somebody will come down that happens to be responsible for doing the audit, and they’ll whip right through the area. They won’t talk to anybody. They won’t open any drawers. They won’t do anything other than mark on their sheet and then walk away. I’ve seen that so many times. Audits should be a communication tool, a methodology so that you can actually get together and determine, what’s going well, what needs improvement, what help do you need, etc. It’s too bad that we’ve seen audits drop that low.

David Visco:

The other piece I would pull from this is, less than half of the companies actually have the 5S lead. That’s really too bad because a lot of folks that I talk to when they call me in to help with 5S or just assess how their program’s going, every single one of them doesn’t have the time to handle 5S. And so, what happens is it gets spread out, not managed very well. I think the best way to do that would be to, well, certainly have a team and have a 5S lead.

David Visco:

That person would then spread out the wealth across that team to get all the 5S initiatives done. So you should have somebody who’s the go-to for all questions like the Oracle, for 5S. Just have that person responsible and always available at least to talk. If he has a strong team, that person won’t get overly busy either. They should be able to spread the wealth there. So that’s really important for sustaining.

David Visco:

People are way too busy to even do a quick audit. How are we ever going to sustain all the other stuff with 5S, and even the other lean tools?

Maribeth Ross:

That’s some great advice, David. Before we move into floor marking, I’d just like to remind our audience that they can submit their questions using the Q and A function at the bottom of their screen. What that does is it queues the questions up so that at the end of this webinar, I’ll be able to run through those questions with David and you can get your questions answered live. We like to see those come in early instead of all rush in at the end. So if you have one, please put it in there. Thanks.

Maribeth Ross:

Moving on to floor marking, the question that we posed to our panel was, in which ways do you use aisle and floor marking? Again, this was a select all that apply kind of question. Essentially, what we saw was that people use floor marking for a variety of reasons. Most popular among our survey respondents was floor marking to indicate storage areas. But safety also seemed to be a common theme, with over 51% floor marking to prevent slipping, 47% to remind about areas to avoid or restricted use areas. David, do these numbers surprise you? I’d love to just talk about floor marking for a bit.

David Visco:

Yeah, they’re actually lower than I would suspect. I base that on floor marking is our number one category here at the 5S Store. For 15 straight years, floor marking has led the way every single month, except one, when custom boards were going through the roof. But every single month, except for that one month, for 15 years, people avoided more floor marking than any other solution on our website.

David Visco:

So it surprises me that somewhere around half are using floor marking. I mean, it’s a key tool to use and you set in order phase. And it’s easy to use too. So that really does surprise me a bit. I’m glad to see that it’s being used often for safety reasons. But again, not nearly enough. These numbers should certainly be a heck of a lot higher. So I’m not really sure why that is, what people are doing instead of using floor marking. I don’t really know, but it certainly can be extremely useful for setting an order and keeping people safe and making sure that they’re walking where they’re allowed to and not walking where they can’t.

David Visco:

It’s funny, I think most of us probably saw all sorts of floor marking when COVID hit. I know, with the Walgreens near us, all of a sudden they had blue tape down on the ground, and I wound up bringing them some really nice “Stay six feet back” signs. And all of a sudden, I saw that everywhere. Although it was awful because there was a pandemic. But I was still seeing signs of 5S and floor tape all over the place. So I took pictures. It was fun to see, get the best out of that, that I could. But yeah.

Maribeth Ross:

Let’s stay on the topic of visual alerts for a bit and dive a little deeper into visual cues. We asked the audience, which of the following visual alerts they use to alert employees of possible dangerous areas. Again, select all that apply. Over 76% of respondents indicated that they use visual alerts to identify movement paths. And this is a really promising start. Yet only 59% mark hazardous areas. Less than half of the respondents mark intersections or hazardous equipment and tripping hazards.

Maribeth Ross:

When we look more specifically at floor marking, we see a similar trend with the visual cues not being used to their fullest extent. David, let’s stay on this topic of visual. Do these numbers concern you when you think about visual alerts combined with the floor marking stuff?

David Visco:

Yeah. They’re certainly lower than they should be. I mean, a good note, it’s good to see that movement paths have been identified with floor tape. That’s a good thing. But keep in mind that the tape can also be used as visual signals on where to put things. So I’m really surprised it’s as low as it is, and especially in intersections marked. There are more accidents in warehouses where you’ve got a nice big intersection going with multiple forklifts and whatnot.

David Visco:

I was at a client recently where I saw two forklifts almost run into other. It’s interesting. In these days, we had actually… There’s a new solution that’s come out over the last year or two, that’s really growing in usage, and there are these LED projector signs, which are really pretty sweet. The way those work is they shine down a image from up above.

David Visco:

The most popular one is the stop sign. And the great thing is you can put them anywhere. There’s all sorts of different signs available for that. But that’s one solution that people have found lately that have worked really well.

Maribeth Ross:

For our audience, if anyone is interested in learning more about these projector signs, Rena just popped a link to an example of projector signs in our chat, and you can just click that link and check those out when you have a moment. On a fun note, we asked participants what term they use, because, as David says all the time, we hear 5S and we hear 6S. Here’s a breakdown. It looks like overwhelmingly people are still calling it 5S.

Maribeth Ross:

But we had an interesting response from one survey taker who said that they use the term 7S. For them, the seventh S is international traffic in arms regulations, so ITAR security. That’s their seventh S. I thought that was pretty cool. David, if you could move to the next quotes. I’d love to wrap up with these. Again, folks, if you have questions, please pop them in to the Q and A function, and we’ll get those answered. But here’s a couple of quotes that I just wanted to wrap our discussion today with.

Maribeth Ross:

We allowed respondents to put in anecdotal statements and anything that they wanted to add. We didn’t guide them in any way. Two key quotes that we got, you see here. One said, “Regarding 5S, sometimes it just hard to get skilled trade workers to buy into being the “janitor”.” The other comment that we saw that I found interesting was, “Our 5S work has been very, very COVID-focused in 2020, but not so much on the broader 5S concepts. Lean and lean initiatives have fallen way off, and it’s rarely mentioned by name anymore.”

Maribeth Ross:

Ironically, their quick pivot to source, produce, and supply PPE for this respondent, essentially saved their company and opened up new markets for them. So it’s interesting to see how lean and 5S can actually help in different ways than we ever thought. David, I’d love to get any comments that you have on either or both of these quotes.

David Visco:

Sure. Yeah, I think, regarding the one about being a janitor, I know I heard that a ton in the beginning when we first started the company. What’s important for everybody to realize with a 5S initiative is… Or when you’re trying to get people to buy into it anyway, is to help point out to them all of the what’s in it for them. Most people, they want to come to work, do a good job, be safe, and then go home and come back the next day.

David Visco:

Well, with 5S, sure there might be some cleaning, but it’s so much more than that. It’s making a workplace just more pleasant to be in. It helps to enforce accountability if it’s done right. And it enables the workforce. If you have a 5S group of people that are trying to work in an area together, it’s just going to make life so much better for everyone. A solid 5S process can also help if you do the sort process and you realign an area, and you shrink it down a bit because you realized you didn’t need all that much room, you could free up a lot of square space, which can eventually turn into new equipment coming in so that you could build more widgets.

David Visco:

The better your company does, as an employee, you’re going to do better as well. That’s just how it goes. Your career could proceed forward and all sorts of good things. There’s just so much good stuff with 5S, but people sometimes, they lose that or management has forgotten to take them into consideration. And when that happens, that’s the comments that you get.

Maribeth Ross:

Thanks for that, David. Thanks for the viewers. Your questions are starting to roll in. So we’d like to spend the remainder of our time together today on what we’re seeing come in from the audience. First was more of a comment than a question, but I wanted to just put it out there for you, David, in case you had any kind of response. The comment was, “In warehouses, it works better if maintenance has equipment to clean and shine aisle and common areas.” Do you have anything to add to that? Do you agree?

David Visco:

Sure. Why not? Why not have a certain tool board made for them so that it’s always readily available? The maintenance crew can easily… It’d be better than just putting stuff away in a closet somewhere. Have it out and about somewhere where it’s flexible, maybe on a mobile board or what have you. But yeah, I don’t see any reason why there would be a problem having equipment in the warehouse.

Maribeth Ross:

Great. The next question is about a team. “David. I heard you mention 5S teams several times. Can you please share who should be on the 5S team?”

David Visco:

Sure. That’s a great question. Over the years, I’ve refined this quite a bit, but you certainly want a few people that are in the area, even the production workers and what have you. It’d be great if you could have somebody from facilities on the team, because something that people miss quite often is the facilities group takes ownership of that building.

David Visco:

If you want to put up like daisy chain to hang a sign and move a piece of equipment, or do something to the floor, or add some electrical, whatever, you’re going to need them anyway. So why not include them on the team from the get-go. It’s such a good thing to do. Additionally, I like the idea of having somebody from HR on the team, because remember, 5S is all about changing behaviors and behavior change can be challenging if it isn’t handled right.

David Visco:

One example would be a supervisor gets promoted… Well, a person gets promoted to a supervisory role, and all these people now report to them, whereas before they were just one of the gang. That person may not know how to tactfully deal with challenges that come up because of 5S, somebody’s not doing their work, they’re not being part of the 5S team, etc. So having HR right there involved along the way can really help people learn how to deal with those challenging situations that inevitably will come up.

David Visco:

Yeah. Then, of course, you want a 5S lead and a couple of other people from other departments maybe, just so you could get a cross reference and just get ideas from everybody included. That would work.

Maribeth Ross:

Thanks. Here’s our next question. Our next question comes from somebody who is new to 5S, and so they have not rolled 5S out to the team yet. They’re trying to get all their ducks in a row. And so, this person is specifically asking about the 5S solution package at the 5S Store. She wants to know, “Do you recommend this as an essential purchase or do you recommend something else?” In addition, she wanted to know if you thought that the nuts and bolts game would be beneficial as well to the rollout.

David Visco:

That’s a great question. Good stuff. Yeah, the 5S solution package, we’ve had that available for years. It’s a very nice, simple system to use with workbooks, and a video, and what have you, and it has a facilitator guide there to walk you through all of the steps to implement 5S, so you can set up like a classroom type of solution.

David Visco:

Another way to go about this would be to grab my book, because it’s made for the easy. I mean, it’s just follow it step by step and you’ll be good. And just do as it says. Maybe tackle one chapter at a time, one chapter a week or whatnot. I see a lot of times people, they’ll jump into 5S, just nothing but brute force. They feel like they’ve got to get it done. Well, as I’ve said in the very beginning, there’s no getting it done. It’s just getting it started, which you’re new to it. So that’s exactly where you’re at.

David Visco:

If you just do small improvements every day or every week, just small steps, that’ll work out great for you. Another thing you could do is get some coaching. I’m available certainly to just talk, for free. Just pick up the phone, give me a call, send me an email, whatever, and I’d be happy to go over things. And then, if you want a more robust coaching program, we could do that too. It can offer that and help you out, either on-site or virtually. Yeah, I think that would work pretty well. Why don’t you give me a call and we’ll talk?

Maribeth Ross:

Thanks, David.

David Visco:

Sure.

Maribeth Ross:

Here’s another good one. I haven’t seen this one come in before on any of our previous webinars. This person says, “We fail due to the movement of employees in our union factory. People move jobs through bid bump process seniority, and they can’t get a sense of ownership. Do you have any tips for driving a sense of ownership across a unionized workforce?”

David Visco:

That’s a good question. Unions are certainly challenging. But I realized I forgot to answer the last question about the nuts and bolts game. It’s a really great little product. It’s super simple, but it drives home the idea of setting an order in 5S, and I would highly recommended. I use it every time I do a training on 5S. I also use the pegboard game too because that helps build the foundational thoughts around standardizing the workspace. So those two are really great.

David Visco:

Okay. As far as ownership, driving ownership and a union shop, I’ve only been involved in one or two union shops over the years of dealing with 5S, and it was certainly challenging. But there were two different groups. I had one where the union was just dead against it, and the other one is that they were for it. So I’m not sure which one you’re involved in. I guess I’ll assume that they’re okay with it and there’s a good relationship with the union.

David Visco:

It shouldn’t be a problem for people to move from one department to another or from one job to another, if you have the right standards in place. If your visuals are so clear, then anybody knows what they’re supposed to be doing, or where such and such is stored, or what step I’m supposed to make yet, or where this goes, where that goes, if you have nice signage throughout the place. And just the fact that you could bring anybody in there and they would have a feel for the area and what have you, losing people from one area to the next shouldn’t be a problem because it should be standardized across all departments.

David Visco:

I don’t know what kind of training they have given their folks, but that’s key too. It needs to be a really solid formulated training program that everybody in the plant has gone through. Even make it part of employee orientation. I suggest that highly, and make product reviews as to how they’re doing as part of being part of the 5S team. Yeah, so I hope that helps. I’d be happy to talk to if you want to drop me an email or a phone call or whatnot.

Maribeth Ross:

Thanks, David. We had two questions come in that are similar, so I’m going to ask them together. One of the questions was, how can I create the color coding approaches that you talked about? The second related question was about visual colored zones. Any ideas or suggestions on how to accommodate colorblind coworkers?

David Visco:

That’s a good question. I guess, for the colorblind, maybe you could use symbols instead of color. Let’s see. For example, we have checkered tape instead of solid tape. So that might work as far as tape goes. We could also probably print shadow boards with shapes like… I’m thinking of like stripes, triangles, stuff like that to try and signify the difference. You could use circles also. Total of symbols on the shadows I think would work out. It’s a good challenge, though, for sure at how to go about doing that. The other question was about what, Maribeth?

Maribeth Ross:

It was, “How can I create the color coding approaches that you talked about?”

David Visco:

Okay. Well, what I’ve done in the past with companies is like this one place I was at recently, had six different zones in a 500,000 square foot facility. Was huge, and each zone had a color to it. They had a map on the wall which outlined zone and showed what color they were in those zones. What they did was they made sure all of the cleaning equipment was the same color. Let’s say it was green for zone two, all the tools in zone two would be, color-coded broom code, color-coded handle, etc., that would be green. And we have all those on our website.

David Visco:

In fact, we’ve added a ton of new color-coded cleaning tools recently. Let’s say you have some two whalers that you want to stay in that area. Well, just put some tape around it, around the handle. Still, whatever color, it should be for that particular zone. A lot of folks will also use like quarter-inch vinyl tape and just put it around a tool handle instead of doing that Plasti Dip that I talked about, and folks order that quite often too, and that works well. Just get creative with it. Colors, they can work wonders, to just help standardize and separate one area from another.

Maribeth Ross:

Our next question is about floor marking. “We’re one of those companies that is not employing floor marking optimally. What are some tips for getting started with floor marking?”

David Visco:

Yeah, that’s a challenge a lot of folks have. What I find is most people, they order a tape because they think it might be the right tape, and they just don’t know any better. They might have a smooth floor and order a tape that would be better suited to a porous floor. So you’re already starting on the wrong foot because you’ve got the wrong tape. And then when they get the tape, most people don’t know how to install it properly.

David Visco:

With floor tape, now we have two different types of… Well, we have a couple different types of heavy- duty tape. But our most popular is the viZ-Mark, which is used for smooth floors, and Durastripe Supreme that’s used for porous floors. Assuming you get the right tape to begin with, and you can always call us and we can help. In fact, we’ll even send a sample so that you can test it out.

David Visco:

What you always you want to do once you pick the right tape, is install it right. These two tapes that I mentioned, the heavy-duty ones, they have a pressure-sensitive adhesive on them. What that means is you need to tamp the tape into the floor, not just step on it with your foot, because that’s really not enough weight. You have an arch in your foot and that just doesn’t work really well.

David Visco:

So you want to make sure you install it properly. You can roll over it with a forklift or maybe even have a landscape roller or whatnot. Just go right over the tape and help press it into the ground. Of course, before you do any of that, you need to clean the floor and dry it really well too.

Maribeth Ross:

Helpful, David. Well, thank you to our viewing audience for the questions that were submitted. I’m excited to share with you that we have a special offer for you today as a thank you for attending our webinar. David is offering $500 off of an on-site 5S assessment. If this is something that you’re interested in, please contact David directly for details if you’d like to take advantage of the offer. Here’s some info on how to reach him.

Maribeth Ross:

You can see that his email and his direct phone number are on the screen. We also have included on here a number of resources that might be helpful to you. David talked about his book earlier. But we also have a free area of the 5S Store website called 5S Blackboard. This is an area that hosts best practices content, and downloadable tools, and a blog about the topic of 5S that you can access at any time. So please visit.

Maribeth Ross:

You can also register on Blackboard so that you get updated via email when new stuff goes up. As always, we have our social sites on the right-hand side. Please give us a follow, and our store, the 5S Store, can be found at www.the5Sstore.com. Thank you again for joining our webinar and have a great afternoon.

David Visco:

Bye

The post The State of 5S in 2021 appeared first on SafeWork Insider.

As we head into 2021, we have the opportunity to get 5S working well for us again. Join David Visco, author of 5S Made Easy and founder of The 5S Store, as he shares seven must-do actions for 5S Success in 2021.

In this webinar, you will learn these 5S success strategies:

• The critical area to focus on in order to start fresh in 2021
• Keys to baselining your current state and why it is important
• The role of red-tagging in 2021

This and more are covered in the webinar video. Please take a look – you’ll be glad you did!

Transcripts from the 7 Must-Dos for 5S Success Webinar

Maribeth:

Good afternoon. Thank you for joining us for today’s Webinar. 7 Must-Dos for 5S Success in 2021. Before we get started, we have a few housekeeping items. The hashtag for the Webinar is #5Ssuccess. So feel free to post any insights using this hashtag on Facebook, Instagram, and Twitter, and be sure to tag us. You can ask questions via the chat or Q&A capability any time during today’s presentation. We’ll attempt to answer all of the questions at the end of the presentation. But if your question isn’t answered today, someone will follow up with a response after the Webinar. This session is being recorded and it will be sent to you following the presentation for your own purposes or to share with others. Now I’d like to introduce you to our speaker.

Maribeth:

David Visco is a 5S expert. Beginning in 1985, David launched his career as a warehouse control manager, running a distribution centre that managed inventory of over $500 million in value. As he furthered his career, he gained extensive experience across warehouse, production planning, logistics, and materials management. Using 5S in the workplace, he saw a unique opportunity and a need for a 5S resource, and in 2006 he founded the 5S Store. The first online store dedicated entirely to 5S. The 5S Store provides a massive range of 5S products, free best practices information, and coaching services to thousands of clients. In 2015, his first book, 5S Made Easy was published. Today in addition to his role at the 5S Store, he frequently speaks publicly on the topic of 5S best practices. Take it away, David.

David:

Hey, thanks Maribeth. Hey, everybody. Thank you for coming today. I’m David Visco, founder of the 5S Store and long time 5S practitioner. Today we’re going to help you out, whether you’re trying to kickstart your 5S program or whether you’re looking back at it and saying, “Good God, where did it all go wrong?” And how can we help you? So I got all sorts of ideas for you in that regard. And we’re also going to give you seven must-dos that you could do today, simple activities just to get things going again. All right. So let’s see how this is going. Sorry, having some technical difficulties. There we go. All right. So our agenda today. We’re going to reflect, really look back at where we were last year and where we are now.

David:

Then we’re going to talk about some tips to make 5S easier for you, because people make 5S way more difficult than it needs to be. So I’m hoping to help you out with that. And we’ll give you some tips for everybody’s favorite 5S subject sustaining. After that, towards the end, I’m going to give you the number one tip for a 5S success. All right. So this is interesting. So first off I want you all to cut yourself some slack, right? We just came out of a pandemic. Well, we’re coming out of a pandemic. And it was a tough year for a lot of people. And I’ve been talking to customers regularly. We get on the phone. “How’s your 5S program going?” And everybody’s just, they’re down on themselves. Like, “Oh, geez, we let this slip. We let that slide. We haven’t been doing a good job.” And I’m like, “Good God, man, give yourself a break.” We were in a pandemic last year.

David:

So I’m suggesting everybody just cut yourself some slack. We recently did a State of Lean Survey and you’re going to hear more about that in the coming months. And what we found was over 50% of the companies lost focus on their 5S program. And again, that’s fine. It’s to be expected. We just came out of a pandemic, or through the year everybody’s priorities had to change. All of a sudden we were stuck like, “All right. Am I going to go replace floor tape with my furloughed workforce and demand still being there to some extent. Am I going to try and ship out my widgets?” So priorities shifted, right? So stop beating yourself up. As it turned out for those companies who had 5S in place before the pandemic, we actually found that the standards, especially in shine, helped them reduce exposure to the virus because the place was clean. They had standards in place to keep the place clean on a regular basis.

David:

So it was more orderly. So it was a great thing if you had 5S in place, it certainly helped in that regard. Now we got 2021 in front of us. We could just kiss 2020 goodbye. Start off with a nice fresh clean slate for 5S in 2021. And that’s what we’re looking I’ll help you with today. So one I like to do is to do a retrospective on last year. Sit down and take a hard look at exactly how your 5S program was last year. So first for those of you that are actually 5S leaders and own the program, I suggest you go find a nice quiet space or whatever, sit down and think about, how did you do with your program last year in your role? Are their things that you could have done better? Are the things you did really well? Give yourself a pat on back for what went well, but really do an introspective on how did things go? How did you handle 5S? And then do the same thing with your team. Assuming you have a 5S team.

David:

I’m hoping you do. Get together with the team. Have them do the same thing. Think about what they could have done better, what they did really good job on and whatnot, and then get the team together. Sit down and talk and figure out, “All right, how can we improve in 2021?” Clean slate, right? Start over. And then if you dare, go talk to the executive team, the folks on the corner office. The people that suggested or are watching over you to do 5S in the first place. Get their input. How do they think 5S went last year? What would they like to have seen done better? And while you’re at it, ask them to get more involved too. So the goal is going to be during this time of looking back, what was the state of 5S at the start and the end of 2020? Did you start really strong and then fade as you might’ve with the pandemic and all. But what’d you do good? And why do you think that was the case? Why did you fall behind? Try and learn from it, right? Its continuous improvement after all.

David:

So the whole idea there is that we keep trying to make improvements and we keep track of how we’re doing. Then we fix things, and we adjust. No judgment, right? It’s a no judgment zone. There should be no judgment here. It’s all about just trying to improve as you go along. But you want to really take note of what was going well and what wasn’t. Next. I suggest doing a baseline audit. Everybody loves audits, right? But whatever your process is today for doing 5S Audits, get the team together and go out and do an audit of the entire plant with your current process. So give yourself a baseline as to where you are today, right? Because you need a baseline so that you can set new expectations, new standards. It started here, this is where you want to be. So compare where you are now, compared to where you were before the pandemic, just to give yourself some perspective. And from there, take a look at your methods in your auditing. How was it going? The audit itself, not the scores, but the process for your audits.

David:

Dig through that process. Figure out if you were doing it as effectively as you could have been. Summarize your findings and then communicate it. The whole idea with 5S after all isn’t to put a nice pretty chart up on a wall or on a whiteboard. Isn’t to stand up there quarterly during a staff meeting or whatnot and say, “Hey, our 5S score improved from a whatever, an 80 to a 90.” That isn’t the point. The point of 5S Audits after all are to improve the line of communication. Give yourselves opportunities for leaders and managers, supervisors, and the staff and the workers to actually talk, right? It’s supposed to be two way street. That’s the whole idea behind the audits in the first place. You make sure that that is what was going on with your audits in the past. What I find is a lot of companies, they don’t even have a 5S Audit process documented, which is not a great idea, because how are you going to measure it?

David:

You want to make sure you have it documented and reviewed regularly so that you can keep improving and whatnot. It makes it easier to train people on, pass it down. So make sure your 5S Audit process is documented. Something else I continue to push, I spoke to this a lot last year, was on the 5S team, divvy up the responsibilities across the team. So maybe there’s five people on your team. Give one of those people the responsibility of owning the audit process. It doesn’t all have to be on the 5S lead. Somebody in the team can take that part. And that helps the lead quite a bit. Takes a lot of stress off there too. So your goals there as far as doing this baseline audit is to really see where you’re at. Was everything executed properly, as far as your audits go? Were they on the right cadence? So you’re doing them weekly, monthly. I have some clients that only do it annually. That to me seems to be pretty ineffective. And then again others do it daily, which I think is too much. But every place finds their own cadence.

David:

So figure out what the cadence should be for yours, and make sure that they were having the impact that they were supposed to have in the first place. If they weren’t, figuring out why. Dive into it, make the improvements. Focus on communication. Oh my. This is a big piece that I think gets missed quite often. Now that you’ve done the audits and you’ve sat with the team and you’ve looked at how things went last year, which you can do better and whatnot, you’ve got a foundation in place that you can then go communicate out to the plant and let people know what’s coming. You have to communicate. It’s so important. Research actually shows that people will take what’s familiar to them and they’ll work with it and they’ll move towards it. As opposed to the fear that ensues when something is new to them or they don’t understand, or they don’t know, right? The unfamiliar stuff is what puts fear in people.

David:

There’s actually something called the mirror exposure effect, which is, as people see things 10 to 20 times, they really start to encompass it and get their hands around it and start to follow it and understand it. It takes a lot of different effort and communication to get this to settle in. And it’s got to be multiple ways, audio, visual, et cetera. Not just, you put a chart up on a communication board once a month and you expect people to see it. It’s incredibly important to communicate this out to everybody. So review your current 5S communication plan. Do you even have one? Some folks, again, just stick with the chart on a wall. That really isn’t sufficient. Revise or develop a plan, right? Again, make it documented. Make it something somebody owns. Assign it to somebody on the 5S team. So one person should be responsible for communicating everything about your 5S program.

David:

Make sure everybody knows. How often are you doing audits? How are things going? Who’s really doing a great job with 5S? Updating the communication boards with the before and after pictures and pictures of the team. You want to put all that stuff in place. Make sure you’re communicating to everybody how it’s going. While you’re at it, why not have some fun? These days everybody’s got a cell phone on them. You can do a video, do a quick live video around your plant as you go out you happen to see something really good going on in 5S, or do you want to go celebrate a team’s victory, maybe there’s an area that used to be a real scary place and now it looks amazing. Have fun with that. Take pictures, take video, maybe have a 5S party. It doesn’t all have to be just checking the box. You might as well enjoy yourself while you’re at it. So what are you going to do and why? You need to communicate that to folks.

David:

What is it that you’re going to do now that the new year is here to re-launch your 5S program. Make sure you tie it back to all the insights that you gathered on the previous steps. Take it from there, document it, set up your goals, your milestones or responsibilities. Make sure everybody has a piece. Make sure everybody’s vested. As you go along and you improve the process, make sure you update all your documentation. Make sure everybody knows what’s going on. I find too many times 5S leads and whatever, they just keep it in their own little bubble. Then they wonder why it doesn’t sustain and why people aren’t on board. Get everybody involved. Lose the clutter. It’s the fourth step that I’m suggesting you do. Pretty easy to do. And what better process than the red tag process to do this. As we’ve been doing throughout this Webinar here, evaluate the process.

David:

How was your red tag program going in the past? Was it going really well? Were people filling out tags? Was the red tag area overflowing with junk for months, and months, and month to the extent where it’s all dust-laden. I find that happens a lot. Build and document out a new plan. Maybe you didn’t have it documented, as I’ve said in the past, document it out. Then communicate that plan to folks. So you’re going to do a red tag event, maybe quarterly. But make sure everybody in the plant knows where the red tag areas are, for example. One suggestion I would have is that depending on the size of the facility have multiple red tag areas and make sure its always right tags handy. And you want to make sure that you remind people why you doing red tagging in the first place, right? What’s the why? What’s the reason? Get them behind it, the reason you’re doing red tags, or red tagging, or sorting, or whatever you want to call it, is to keep the area free of clutter.

David:

It helps improve safety. As you free up floor space it might help you open up new space for new equipment to come in. To build more widgets for the company to grow. It just makes the area so much better to work in too, right? Another idea would be to have a red tag day. So because of the pandemic, maybe you haven’t done much sorting and the places is falling part a little bit, bring in some pizza, have some fun, crank up the tunes. You might as well have some fun with it all. Have a red tag day. And maybe you can even donate products and whatever it is that you have leftover that wind up in the red tag area that you’re not going to keep. You can either give them to employees or find a local charity or whatnot to give it to, but you can really do some really great stuff with them. As a matter of fact.

David:

To help you in that regard, we’re actually going to have a program, a special for you for attending the Webinar where you could get 20% off of all the red tag items with the 5S store. So there’s no minimum. Just go to the website and use the code: 20OffRedTag and save 20%, why not. Have at it. Do a refresh blitz. Everybody likes the word blitz in 5S and Kaizen. Kaizen blitz. Let’s do a blitz of our floor tape. Sit there and take a look at your floor marking program. Do you actually have standards in place and whatnot. See how it’s working for you. Remove all your worn tape. Every place I go into has old 5S tape lying around. So remove it. Figure out if it’s needed or not. And install new tape in new floor signs wherever you need it. Make sure that you have standards like the color guidelines on the screen there. Those will really help you, and you really need to have those standards anyway. It’s the fourth best bite after all.

David:

Create a standardized five best materials worksheets that everybody in the plant knows. Where to get their materials from. Which tape you’re using for certain areas. What color you’re going to use. Are you going to use two-inch DuraStripe Supreme, or are you going to use Vestmark tape or maybe just cheap vinyl tape. But you want to make sure you have a standard list of all of your floor marking materials, so that everybody knows where to get it and what items in particular to use. And then set up a Materials Kanban. I think that really is handy. There were some companies I’ve worked at where we set up shelving of all the 5S materials that we needed. The team put together the wrong Kanban cards. And we just had a little bin handy. So as they got low to whatever rate we set it at. Once a week the purchasing folks would come by and scoop up the cards.

David:

We never run out of materials, because if there’s one thing that’ll stop you fast at 5S is running out of materials when people are actually anxious to go use them. So you always want to make sure you don’t run out for Kanban at work for that of course. Some folks have challenges laying floor tape down and what have you. So we do have a floor taping guide, which also give you tips for installation, tell you what type of tape you should use depending on your environment and whatnot. A lot of really good stuff there. You can find that on the learn tab of the 5S store. Shine for safety. So there’s a whole new set of standards today, right? Review your shine standards. So because of the pandemic, I think it really turned shine on its head. Previously, the way I define shine was that it was used to clean to inspect. It wasn’t just about mopping up and cleaning equipment.

David:

Think of this, you have a piece of equipment that’s all grungy dirty. It’s been there forever. It’s filthy rotten. It could be leaking a lot, you don’t even know. Once you clean that baby up and you paint it and whatnot, then when there’s a leak, you’ll be able to see that leak, right? You’ll know there’s an issue to be addressed. That’s how I think of Shine. Well now the old standards for cleanliness may have changed because of the pandemic. Maybe you want to add cleaning stations. Tool shadow boards of mops and wipes and masks and what have you. Make sure everybody’s trained. It’s super important to make sure you communicate that out to everyone in the plant, everybody knows. Communicate it often. You also might want to think about… We have a free download on our 5S Blackboard site. On the resources tab it’s a 5S maintenance chart, which makes it real easy to keep track of what needs to be cleaned and who owns what, who’s responsible for what.

David:

Last but not least, one of the great easy tips is to make it easy. That’s why I named my book, 5S Made Easy. You want to make 5S easy. What I find is so many people over complicate it. It doesn’t have to be that way. Small improvements every day. You don’t have to move a mountain. Just make small improvements every day. Share the love, spread it around. Make sure everybody is active in your 5S program. Like the areas in the quadrants. One area where that works particularly well is in a warehouse. Let’s say you have 20 hours in the warehouse, give everybody a couple of hours they’re responsible for. Then do quick five minute audits at the end of the day, randomly. But as the owner of the area, just go by and do a real quick checklist.

David:

Make sure people are doing what they’re supposed to be doing. And if not, talk to them, communicate. Find out, maybe they need support. There could be a whole bunch of reasons. But don’t just go hide near in your office if something isn’t right. Talk to them. You just do it a couple of minutes every day. Make sure you give your team 10 or 15 minutes at the end of the day to do what you want them to do. You can even use our management walk cards. Those are really pretty handy, and they make it super easy. They’re posted based. You just leave behind a little note. If they did something really good, you leave the achievement one behind. If an area needs some work, leave the opportunity card behind. Just make it easy on yourself. It doesn’t have to be overly complicated. All righty.

Maribeth:

Thanks David.

David:

Sure.

Maribeth:

Thank you to our viewers for the submitted questions. You still have a couple minutes to get them in. So if you have additional questions, please submit those via the Q&A button at the bottom of your screen. While that’s happening, David I’d like to start with the first question that came up, starts with a comment actually, we’ve had mixed results with audits. If there was one tip that you could give for audit success, what would that be?

David:

Well, that’s a good one. First of all, I’d be curious as to whether or not you actually had a standardized process. So one tip I would suggest is that you have a standardized scoring process. It tends to be subjective. A lot of folks they’ll rank an area on one to five, and that can be very subjective. So why not base it on the number of nonconformances instead. Set up a scoring system like that. We actually have an audit form free download on our site that is based on that type of an item. So I would suggest making sure that you have a standardized way of measuring the data in the first place.

Maribeth:

Thanks David for that. The next question that I’ve seen come in from the audience is about floor tapes. So do you have any tips about helping floor tape stick better to the floor?

David:

Yeah. Well, it’s a common question. What I found is a lot of times people are using the wrong type of tape for their particular floor. For example, a smooth floor need a different type of adhesive than a porous floor. We know which tapes are best for each. So it’s in that tape guide too. So first I tell people, make sure that you’re buying the right tape for your particular conditions. Secondly, you need to make sure to install it properly. What a lot of folks do is they take the tape, they lay down, they press it with their hands or step on it with their foot. And they think that that should be enough.

David:

Well, as it turns out, most of these heavy-duty tapes have pressure sensitive adhesive. So that requires a lot of pressure to be tamped into the tape, where you’re actually pressing the tape into the floor. You can use the rear wheel of a forklift, or we even have a tamper cart or whatnot. But you need to put excessive weight on the tape to press it down. So the two things are, make sure you’re buying the right tape and make sure you’re installing it properly. If you have any questions on that, you could certainly give us a call. Most of it, it’s in the tape floor guide, but we’re happy to talk to you too.

Maribeth:

Thanks for that, David. I wanted to point out to our viewers that the taping guide that David referred to is available free on our website. The link to that guide has been put in the chat for this Webinar, but you can find it in the 5S Blackboard. So I’m going to move on to our next question now. This question came in from our audience and they’re asking about, is video training better than face to face in terms of completing audits? Your thoughts?

David:

Face-to-face is definitely better. Absolutely. Hands down. I mean, if you want boots on the ground whenever you can have it. No doubt about that. I’ve never experienced people doing video audits. So that’s different. I’ve been asked to go out to some sites, and we have that discussion on, should I physically be there or should we just try and do it through Zoom? And we have found that it’s been so much more effective when I can be right there. It’s just completely different where you’re actually to see people and see the area and get the feel for the culture and the feel for what’s going on, as opposed to just trying to get your hands around it with a video. So if you can do, boots on the ground, that’s what I would suggest.

Maribeth:

Great. So we have a viewer online who does not have 5S implemented yet. What they would like to know is, do you have any advice on what the best place for them to start would be?

David:

That’s great. So where to start, first of all, figure out why you want to implement 5S in the first place. You need to start there. There’s been several customers, people that have called me up to come out and give them a hand, and I go up there and by the time I leave I’m basically telling them I wouldn’t even bother. Because they don’t really know why they’re doing it in the first place, or they don’t have the right culture in place. There’s no respect for the people. Is a whole host of reasons why you can take 5S on when you really shouldn’t. So first step before you waste any time on anything, is figuring out why you want to implement it in the first place. Make sure everybody’s grounded on that.

Maribeth:

Great. So that’s all the time we’ll have today for questions. Thank you, David.

David:

Sure.

Maribeth:

I’d like to thank our viewers for submitting their questions. In wrapping up, if you need the point of view of an expert, here’s some resources on the screen that can help you. What you see here is David’s book, 5S Made Easy. Any 5S supplies that you might need are available at the 5S Store at ComplianceSigns.com. Thank you so much for joining us today.

The post 7 Must-Dos for 5S Success in 2021 appeared first on SafeWork Insider.

5S was initially developed in Japan by Hiroyuki Hirano. It was a part of the manufacturing method begun by the leaders at the Toyota Motor Company in the early to mid-20th century. It became known as the Toyota Production System. 5S was one of the techniques that included kaizen, kanbans, jidoka (intelligent automation), heijunka (production leveling and smoothing) , and poka-yoke (mistake proofing). It enabled what was termed ‘Just in Time Manufacturing’. It reflected a focus on eliminating waste in all its forms. Central to it was minimizing inventory.

Hirano’s 5S framework provided a structure for improvement programs.

He developed a series of identifiable steps, each building on its predecessor. Production managers had always recognized the need to decide upon locations for materials and tools for improved flow of work. Central to this was the principle that items not essential to the process should be removed. Instead, they should be stored elsewhere or eliminated completely. Hirano emphasized that any effort to consider production layout and flow before the removal of the unnecessary items was likely to lead to a suboptimal solution.

The Seiso, or cleanliness, phase of 5S is the element of the change program that can transform a process area.

Hirano’s view was that the definition of a cleaning methodology was a discrete activity. It was not to be confused with the organization of the workplace. It helps to structure any improvement program. Breaking down the improvement activity in this way clarifies the requirements for the cleanliness. And, it must be understood as a factor in the design aspect of a facility.

Hirano was also aware of the Hawthorne Effect (a type of reactivity in which individuals modify an aspect of their behavior in response to their awareness of being observed). He realized that while we can introduce change people consider the change program to be under management focus. If it is, the benefits of the change will continue. But when this focus has diminished, performance will slip. So maintaining focus is key to long-term success.

So what does 5S mean for warehousing?

Lean warehousing is the way of the future. In an April 2014 report, the Council of Supply Management Professionals identified Lean as a projected characteristic for the supply chain by 2025. According to the report:

The pressure to do more with less will not subside. Lean and Continuous Improvement practices will be essential.

And, implementing 5S is a key step in establishing a Lean warehouse.

5S’s basic objective is to make problems visible. Having a clean and organized warehouse is about more than looking great. It’s about having an efficient fulfillment warehousing operation. A warehouse should be able to identify issues quickly. Then, address their root causes thereby preventing recurrences. If replenishment is needed, if something is out of place, or if tasks are being done incorrectly, 5S can identify these issues and highlight them for quicker resolution.

So what are the principles of 5S? They include the following:

Sort

As a first step in the 5S process, Sorting is key. Sorting out what’s not needed to operate the warehouse daily and to provide the team with a clean slate to organize. Dive into every corner, cabinet, pallet rack, or storage area in the warehouse. Look top-to-bottom and left-to-right. Leave no area unturned.

Set

This step is defined as straightening or streamlining. Traditional Lean practices encourage a streamlined warehouse setup. An optimal warehouse setup will have the shortest possible distance between movement and pick.

Warehouse managers often fall into the trap of using established categories when sorting, instead of thinking about a Lean warehouse. The warehouse can be organized by type of object, chronology of order cycle or most-to-least used. Lean warehousing requires a willingness to implement whatever system will result in the most efficient warehouse. Once you establish the right categories and sort criteria, it’s important to make sure that there is a place for everything. Everything should have an intentional place and a transaction, or a set method of use. This is part of the established process that must be followed.

Shine

When you walk into a Lean warehouse, the results of this step should be immediately visible. Warehouse operations suffer when cleanliness is considered an expendable element. A clean warehouse frees up space to be more productive and profitable and operates better. If warehouse managers skip this crucial step they will pay a price in efficiency, productivity and increased operating cost.

Cleanliness also contributes to an overall standard of behavior on the part of the employees. It signals that order is an expectation of the warehouse. Regular, daily, sweeping should be a part of this Lean warehouse process It should also include safety inspections (decreasing injury liability) and equipment maintenance checks (increasing equipment longevity).

Standardize

Standardizing is the hallmark of the Lean methodology. An example of this is the use of standardized labels. Labels that have all the information needed for any container or product in the warehouse will greatly increase storage and retrieval efficiencies. Eliminating waste is another Lean warehouse tenet. Standardized labels will get rid of wasteful or unnecessary information or clutter.

In Lean warehousing, standardization also applies to a values-driven culture. In it core values drive behavior. Top-down implementation of strong core values results in a consistent and model warehouse culture.

Sustain

The final step to any successful organization methodology is the sustaining step. A successful Lean warehouse will have implemented an efficient process, taken ownership of the Lean warehouse practice and have a transparent and visible way to record and measure every 5S activity.

Sustaining is also where regular analysis and reassessment occurs. A Lean warehouse prioritizes Continuous Improvement. Metrics must show results or the system must be reassessed. Practice and measurement will set the warehouse operations up for current and long-term success.

5S is sometimes called 6S, highlighting Safety as the 6th S. Whether you call your program 5S or 6S, safety should always be an overarching theme. Whatever work is done must ensure worker safety and proper ergonomics. Otherwise, the program is flawed and must be corrected immediately.

Utilizing Lean practices in your warehouse, beginning with 5S, will yield great results.

Making 5S a part of your warehouse culture will create an environment where problems are immediately visible, and every employee is engaged in solving them, for their own, as well as for the company’s benefit.

About the Author:

Peter H. Christian was a founding partner and president of espi, a business consulting firm in Northeastern PA. Previously he was an Executive at Crayola Corporation.

He has worked with 300+ clients in business development, profit improvement, operations, IS selection and implementation, and project management. He has 40+ years of experience in strategic and facility planning, CI, lean, and supply chain. He has helped companies to realize millions of dollars in cost reductions and profit improvements adding and retaining thousands of jobs.

He has authored the Amazon bestselling business book, “What About the Vermin Problem?” and is published in a variety of professional magazines.

The post Using 5S in Your Warehouse appeared first on SafeWork Insider.

At its best Lean can be a powerful catalyst for cultural transformation.

In the short term, its implementation can change the way teams interact and how they create and deliver value to the customer and each other.

In the midterm, new processes beget new routines that together engender behavior change.

Over time, if the Lean effort is sustained, that behavior change gives rise to the fabled continuous improvement mindset that can power high performing organizations long term.

Getting from zero to the mindset shift necessary to create a new cultural paradigm requires being specific about your intention for Lean.

Your intention directly correlates with the new behaviors that will result in implementation. Organizations’ intentions for Lean are too often shaped by nearsighted needs:

• Cost savings,
• Productivity gains,
• Delivery times.

The problem with this approach is that nearsighted intention builds behavioral habits that only serve the short term.

The true value of Lean is in how it can affect the big picture. With the right intention, it is possible to have a broad lasting impact, even when you’re starting small. 5S is a great example of how a smaller-scale effort can have either a limited physical impact or serve as an important cultural enabler depending on the intention behind its implementation.

For example, 5S is traditionally executed to get a quick win and show progress when launching a Lean effort. If the intention is simply to achieve a spruced-up working environment, you’ll attain that. You may or may not be able to sustain the cleanliness depending on how you stay on top of it, but regardless, a tidier workspace in one area won’t render new thinking and new productivity and collaboration improving 5S habits in another.

If, however, you introduce 5S habits with the intention of it being the first step to improve employee engagement and company culture, Sort, Set in Order and Shine take on a new, more significant meaning with very different criteria around their implementation.

Suddenly participants aren’t just sorting to see what they have, they’re thinking about how those items got there, why they have them, why they need them, who cares about them being there, what leadership or other team members have to do with the current chaos and what can be done about it.

What kinds of 5S habits do we want to create? A habit of putting things back where they go? Or a habit of thinking critically about what creates value and what doesn’t?

Intention also plays in sustainability. Before I begin a 5S workshop I spend time trying to understand why people are working in their environments the way they are. All behavior is an expression of a need unmet – we all do what we do as a result of a need we have that isn’t being satisfied. There are tangible reasons why the area is the way it is. This is why cleaning up an environment without addressing the root causes of the current state doesn’t lead to sustainable change. It’s why we see 5S efforts repeated several times – and why my garage never stays clean.

Whatever your intention is for 5S, partnering with employees, and leveraging their experience, knowledge, and wisdom are key to seeing it come to fruition. They play an important role in helping to flag unproductive habits and identifying new ones that will sustain the change.

Declare your intentions and articulate the desired habits. Then, your role as a leader is to monitor, follow up, coach, and support those new habits – on a frequent and consistent basis. It takes 20 days to make the habit a routine and 66 days to become unconscious – this is why being strategic about the specific habits we want to create at the outset is so important.

5S habits doesn’t end when the area is clean.

Once the initial habits have become routine, it’s time to reevaluate and identify the next habits that will further the intention of the effort, work to establish those habits, and so on and so on.

For example, in my practice of using Lean to cultivate high performing organizations, reinforcement of 5S gains takes shape via a Gemba Card reminder structure. I’ve found that participation in monthly audit and scoring systems tends to be forced and is perceived as punitive. Without a guide to gauge progress though, leaders can fumble the opportunity to glean valuable insight and ask questions that are too broad or that don’t support the advancement of their effort.

The Gemba Card tool enables leaders, managers, and supervisors to have more thoughtful interaction in the Gemba than if their goal was simply to ensure that certain activities were executed or not. Here again, intention makes its mark, resulting in a higher level of engagement, improved communication, better accountability, and a higher percentage of habits becoming internalized. We also tend to see a lot less resistance to future change efforts.

Meet Scott Gauvin

Scott Gauvin is the CEO of management-consulting firm Macresco and a seasoned change agent with over 25 years experience successfully helping organizations realize their potential. Throughout his career, Scott’s focus has been on driving performance gains through organizational alignment and a progressive approach to operations strategy.

He has advised companies the world over and across a wide range of industries.

He holds a BA from the University of Massachusetts, an MBA from Boston University and is a Six Sigma Black Belt. Scott is also a frequent speaker and has presented for the American Society of Quality, The Shingo Conference, The Association for Manufacturing Excellence, Fabtech, and others.

The post 5S As A Cultural Enabler appeared first on SafeWork Insider.

Join David Visco, author of 5S Made Easy and founder of The 5S Store and Kurtis Johnson, a long-time practitioner of continuous improvement methodologies as they share experience and ideas from the trenches. In this webinar, you will hear about:

• Why continuous improvement and 5S initiatives should be a priority (even in pandemic times)
• How to motivate people with various roles/various backgrounds/various age groups
• Specific methods to help sustain 5S
• The role of KPI scorecards and gamification

Learn practical approaches by joining in this 30-minute webinar. You’ll be glad you did!

Resources for Continuous Improvement Mentioned in the Webinar

Use these resources to help you keep CI alive during these challenging times:

• 5S Games to help your team
• The 5S Success Mindset
• Read about strategies to sustain your 5S program

Meet Your 5S Guides

David Visco is the author of 5S Made Easy and the founder of The 5S Store. Today, he is sharing important tips you can use to ensure that implementing and sustaining 5S is a success in your company.

Learn the secrets to building 5S teams by joining in this 30-minute webinar. You’ll be glad you did!

Special Continuous Improvement Guest, Kurtis Johnson

Kurtis Johnson is a business specialist in manufacturing and operations familiar with using lean strategies for positive improvement. With more than 20 years of production experience coupled with continuous improvement, Kurtis is a change agent that is no stranger to a variety of continuous improvement principles, systems, and tools such as 5s, Lean, daily SQDC focus, A3 Thinking, and Visual Controls.

Transcripts from the Continuous Improvement Webinar

To download a PDF of the transcripts click here.

Maribeth:

Hello, and welcome. Thank you for joining us today. Before we get started, we have a few housekeeping items to cover. First, the hashtag for the webinar is #5S success. So feel free to post insights using this hashtag on LinkedIn, Instagram, Twitter, and Facebook. Also, we welcome you to ask questions throughout the presentation via the Q&A capability. It’s a button at the bottom of the screen towards the right-hand side. As you’ve heard, this is a conversational style webinar, and your questions are helpful to keeping the conversation relevant for you. We will attempt to answer all your questions, but if the question doesn’t get covered today, somebody will follow up with you after the webinar.

Maribeth:

Our session is being recorded and it will be sent to you following the presentation for your own purposes, or if you’d like to share it with others.

Maribeth:

Now I’d like to introduce our speakers.

Maribeth:

David Visco is a 5S expert. Beginning in 1985 David launched his career as a warehouse control manager running a distribution center that managed inventory of over $500 million in value. Using 5S in the workplace, he saw a unique opportunity and a need for a 5S resource and in 2006 he founded the 5S Store, the first online store dedicated entirely to 5S. In 2015 David’s first book, 5S Made Easy was published. Today in addition to his role at the 5S Store, he frequently speaks publicly on the topic of 5S best practices.

Maribeth:

Our second expert today is Kurtis Johnson. Kurtis Johnson is a business specialist in manufacturing and operations familiar with using lean strategies for positive improvement. With more than 20 years of production experience coupled with continuous improvement, Kurtis is a change agent that’s no stranger to a variety of continuous improvement principles, systems, and tools such as 5S, Lean, Daily SQ DC Focus, A3 thinking, and Visual Controls.

Maribeth:

We welcome both of today’s speakers.

Maribeth:

I’m your moderator, Maribeth, and I’ll be leading our discussion today, as well as taking questions from the audience throughout the webinar.

Maribeth:

Let’s get started with talking about a timely topic. I’d like to talk about how we keep continuous improvement alive in pandemic times. Certainly, the pandemic has caused disruption in a lot of working environments. So let me start by asking is continuous improvement still important?

Maribeth:

David, I’d like to ask you this question.

David:

Great question. Thank you, Maribeth. Thanks for joining us, everybody. Thank you Kurtis.

David:

Is 5S important today? I would suggest to you that today it’s more important than ever. The foundation of 5S is all about changing behaviors for the better. It’s not about laying tape or organizing tools on a board or whatnot. It’s about changing behaviors. I don’t know about you, but in the last several months, our behaviors have needed to change enormously like we’ve never seen before. In fact, I’d suggest it’s a life and death situation in a lot of cases.

David:

So the whole concept of 5S today needing to change behaviors is so pertinent more than I think it’s ever been before. We’re seeing that on the manufacturing floor, we’re seeing it in our own personal lives. Everywhere that I go, I’m seeing signs of 5S here and there. So I don’t think it’s ever been more important, truth be told.

Maribeth:

Kurtis, do you have any thoughts on that?

Kurtis:

Yeah. Actually it’s interesting that a lot of places that haven’t really practiced 5S or it’s not as visual before now is. A great example is the small convenience stores with the visual controls in the markings to keep us six feet apart. As David said, it’s changed all our behaviors and that’s one that’s I guess, very, very obvious to us. It’s a great time right now.

Kurtis:

The other thing that 5S does is to help people get a sense of control. So if you are one of the folks that have been doing maybe a kaizen event around 5S or you’re able to lay out your workspace using the 5S principles, this is a great time to have that sense of control with the outside world kind of being in a state of non-control right now.

Kurtis:

Again, I can’t agree with David more that this is a fantastic time to not only see the implementation in places where we don’t normally see it, but also to help us get back that kind of sense of control.

Maribeth:

Gotcha. Gotcha. For the audience, I want to call your attention to a poll that we have put up. You should see on your screen a question. We’re asking each one of you to answer yes or no to the question, has your 5S implementation been impacted by the pandemic? I’ll be able to report to you back in about 30 seconds, what the group has to say about this. So if you could take a moment to answer that poll that would be appreciated.

Maribeth:

Great. There’s our results. It looks like overwhelmingly 5S implementations have been impacted by the pandemic. It’s a 75% to 25% split. It’s interesting that you guys say it’s more important now than ever to have this stuff in place.

Maribeth:

Let’s continue the conversation with how do you maintain focus on these things right now, Kurtis?

Kurtis:

Well one of the keys I think right now, it’s a great time for the practitioners to kind of step up and take the lead and maybe their supervisors or some of those senior leadership is busy doing other things. So I think this is a fantastic time for the folks at the practitioner level to make sure that the 5S routines get re-installed or refocused. It’s a great time to go ahead and maybe take a little bit of the lead and get those routines going again.

Kurtis:

Again with the outside world in such a state of disarray, routines are extremely poor and to get people back focused on work and obviously specific around 5S, it’s a great system and it has a lot of routines built in it. So I would highly suggest use this time as an opportunity for the practitioners out there. Take the lead, if you can and get those 5S routines back and re-established.

Maribeth:

Thank you, Kurtis, for that. I’m going to throw this next one out to David. David, I know that sustaining 5S is a topic that’s near and dear to your heart. Are there some particular favorite, specific tactics for sustaining 5S that you think folks could use right now?

David:

Oh, sure. Yeah, no doubt. I would say first and foremost, though, it’s really important to make sure that you have your standards in place. after all standardized, and a lot of folks concern themselves about sustainment, but first I need to make sure that their standards are in place. So by that, I would say think about when you returned to work. All of a sudden there were new standards, there were new signs and whatnot. Make sure that they’re clear and concise to folks, because otherwise you’re not going to have people following the new standard. They’re not going to understand the new standards. So make sure everybody’s trained and whatnot on that.

David:

But then to sustain those, once you have your clear standards in place, it’s critical to make sure to communicate them. Communication is so key. We all know that, but with sustaining an improvement methodology like 5S and sustaining those new behaviors, you have to communicate out to the group. Make sure that all your employees and all your staff, and in fact, your vendors that might come into the building … Here at the 5S Store, we have UPS showing up. We put new standards in place, even for him when he came to make sure that one, he felt safe and two, that our team felt safe as well. In order to keep those types of things sustained, what’s incredibly important is holding everybody accountable. That goes down all the way from the janitor, all the way up to the CEO.

David:

I’ll give an example. Actually it was years ago when I was at facility and they had a big deal out there for safety glasses. Everybody was supposed to be wearing safety glasses. You’d walk around … There was one company I’d be at where sometimes people had them on, sometimes they didn’t. And when somebody didn’t have them on, nobody would call them out for. So there was no accountability. Then on the other hand, there was another client I was at where you damn well did not go anywhere without having your safety glasses on. And at any given point, if you had them propped up on your head, let’s say somebody saw that they would just call you and say, “Hey, glasses,” and somebody would drop them down.

David:

That’s two different methodologists as far as the behaviors and the communication, the accountability from folks. Everybody today has to hold each other more accountable than ever to follow the new standards that are in place and that’ll help sustain those changes.

David:

Another idea that I would suggest is that you actually build something into your audits regarding … what do you call it …. sanitation and whatnot. During the audits in today’s world, you’re going to want to maybe consider being more empathetic than ever before. Everybody’s on edge and whatnot. The whole idea of an audit to help sustain 5S is really important, but keep in mind that you also want to be more empathetic than you might’ve been in the past when the standards aren’t necessarily being followed, and I think that’s really important.

David:

Lastly, I would say it’s up to the management to sustain all of this and to hold everybody accountable. The leaders of the business have to realize that today more than ever they’re on stage. They’re always on stage. People are always watching what they’re doing, whether they know it or not. So at every time they’re out in about or in their office or anywhere, if the standard is wearing a face mask, you have to always wear a face mask. You can’t just do it well sometimes and whatnot. I call it a management must.

David:

I’ve talked about that on webinars and whatnot. For more about the standards you could certainly look into the book, 5S Made Easy, I talks about that quite a bit. But in today’s world, it’s a whole new game, so let’s make sure management’s doing their thing.

Maribeth:

Thanks David for that. We have our first question from the audience and it pertains to something that one of you said earlier, and I’ve noticed this myself. Some principles of 5S are becoming mainstream even if the people who are using them don’t even know it. What are some of the best practices of 5S that you think are particularly relevant right now?

Maribeth:

I’m going to ask this of both of you, but David since you’ve been talking, if you want to go first, that’s fine.

David:

So what am I seeing now in 5S out just in the marketplace?

Maribeth:

Yeah. When you go into businesses that aren’t typically 5S organizations and you see 5S principles in play, what kinds of principles are you seeing and what do you think is important now?

David:

Okay. I think what I’m seeing the most, even just in my local Walgreens … it was pretty funny … sorry to say it was funny, but when COVID first hit and people started taking it seriously, and this is a few months ago, I went into the local Walgreens and I was at the prescription counter and there was some blue tape on the ground. Being a 5S nut I’m like, “Oh my god, what’s the signal here? What is it that this is supposed to be telling me to do? It’s very unclear.” I even asked the guy behind me because he was right on my shoulder. I’m like, “You’re not supposed to be standing there.” I actually went and talked to the management at the store and I suggested some better visuals, clearer visuals, more concise visuals. So over time they changed those.

David:

What I’ve seen is companies like retail stores and restaurants and whatnot, they’re putting more and more signage in place that’s crystal clear, like, “You cannot enter this business unless much you have your mask on.” Companies are doing that left and right.

David:

What I haven’t experienced yet, but I think has been in the news quite a bit is the situation that puts employees in like at a restaurant, so a waiter or waitress. If somebody from the public walks in and they don’t necessarily have their mask on, those people do they know how to stop the person politely and correctly to say, “Hey, you can’t come in without a mask or whatnot.”

David:

One thing I’m seeing is there’s a lack of training and a lack of standards for even the employees in restaurants and whatnot, and other places that they don’t necessarily know how to handle that situation. That happens a lot in manufacturing too where the training is just missing, and it’s really important to make sure we have that employees.

Maribeth:

Thanks David. Kurtis, do you have any examples of 5S best practices that you’re seeing in play in non-5S organizations?

Kurtis:

Yeah. I think the supermarket is a classic one where you actually have arrows going up and down the aisles. It’s all part of the visceral control, which comes into 5S in a couple of different places. But I think it’s best under the standardization and the individual controls, fits well into some of the standardization stuff that we do when we’re doing the 5S events.

Kurtis:

It’s really interesting again, in the supermarket to watch people. The supermarkets that seem to be doing it well, it’s not just a simple arrow on the floor; they have additional signage. They have signage when you walk in and it’s in your face. But in particular, I’ve noticed additional folks on the floor in these supermarkets where they will actually coach a little bit when they see somebody going the wrong way down the aisle, they’ll actually speak up. And in those stores where they do have employees focused on that, you’ll notice the adherence to the visuals is a lot better versus the stores that just put the arrows on the floor and expect everybody to adhere.

Kurtis:

So there’s some coaching involved, and I think that’s true it relates very much to our workplaces. 5S is a wonderful system, but there’s still that accountability and coaching that needs to happen.

Maribeth:

I just got a timely question from Brian in our audience. And so Kurtis, I’m going to give this one to you since it’s pertinent to what you were just saying. Brian asks, “What are some suggestions to communicate well and often, but also avoid creating signage noise?”

Kurtis:

That’s a really interesting question. I happened to have had the ability to actually go to Toyota or couple of times. I’ll just give you their spiel on it that we ask the same thing, because when you go to Toyota, there is visual controls everywhere. I think they found out over time that the likelihood of over-visualization versus the not having visuals enough, they’ve chosen the latter. I think we can all understand that Toyota has been in the forefront in a lot of things, so I like to side with their findings and say, “You know, I don’t think you can over-visualize at this point.” I would just be in tune with that kind of a message. Obviously there’s always where you can go kind of out of control, but when you do visit their facilities, there’s a lot of visuals, but again, they found it better to go that route then than the lesser route.

Maribeth:

Thanks for that. I’m going to continue with another question from the audience that builds off something that you guys talked about earlier, which was sustainment. The point was made that alignment up through the leaders is really a critical part of success with initiatives like 5S or other continuous improvement initiatives. I’d like for us to talk a little bit about that.

Maribeth:

Kurtis, do you want to take that one?

Kurtis:

Yeah. Some of the best organizations that you go to, and I’ve had the ability through some work with the AME to visit several organizations, and the ones that seem to sustain and also have quite a few of the best practices that we like to share and steal are the ones that have the alignment up the leadership. It’s done a few different ways, either through Gembo Walks or even where the management is out there doing audits themselves. But in those organizations where you see the practice on a daily basis by management is generally where you see the best programs. I mean it’s almost a direct correlation.

Kurtis:

David, do you agree?

David:

Oh yeah, 100%. Yeah. It’s all about their involvement, like you said, Gembo Walks and whatnot. Being out on the floor, being seen, it’s so key. I even suggest to companies that when they’re going through a 5S initiative to have senior management involved in the team, like actually be at the meetings, being on their hands and knees laying tape, being part of the entire initiative so that they show people that it is a thing. It’s not a flavor of the month. We’re completely involved in this and supporting it. Yeah, that’s key.

Maribeth:

I wanted to throw something else out there. We actually had a comment from the audience, which is something that we hadn’t yet brought up about sustainment of behaviors. John from our audience said, “Positive reinforcement is key. When we’re in a group, I will thank someone for wearing their masks, et cetera.” And I thought that was a really good point to share.

Maribeth:

We have another question pertinent to this topic from Megan. Megan’s asking if either of you have any advice for managing projects or teams at a manufacturing facility while you’re working remotely. Any thoughts on that?

David:

You got anything there, Kurtis?

Kurtis:

Yeah. Just from some examples that I’ve seen in the past, you can do a remote management. Sometimes it takes a little bit of … I don’t know what you want to say … brainstorming on how get it done, but in the past I’ve seen where their daily morning meetings may be tier one, tier two, even tier three. They’ve had plants, different sites involved in these meetings and they’ve done it through just like we’re doing today. The various programs, either Skype or Zoom or what have you. It does take a little extra work, but I think it’s still not that hard to do. It’s just a practice of something different, like actually carrying your laptop with you, and when you’re reviewing, you’re using the camera to maybe review the charts on the walls and the updates and that kind of stuff.

Kurtis:

It’s doable. It feels a little strange at first, but it’s just like anything else once you get used to it and find out how to overcome some of these challenges, it’s definitely doable. I guess on the other side of things, technology right now is increasing dramatically to let us work remotely. So it’s actually a great time to use some of these new tools as they appear to us.

Maribeth:

I think that’s true. One of the things that I’ll point out, even though I’m not a panelist today, is that I’ve learned about 5S that taking pictures of what the ideal state looks like is always helpful in keeping people in alignment with what that ideal state is. And so if you’ve done that right pre-COVID, you have these assets available to you to be able to share with people as a reminder of what workstations are supposed to look like, et cetera. I just wanted to put that out there as well.

Maribeth:

While we’re on the topic of sustainment, one of the other things that’s come up is this concept of involving the people and making it fun for them in terms of staying in alignment with their expectations. I’m curious if you could talk about … I’m going to start with Kurtis here … what are some simulation approaches that you like? And for the record, I’m also going to throw up a poll for the audience to tell us whether they’re using simulations.

Kurtis:

One of the classic simulations for 5S is the numbers game. I think most of the folks that are practitioners or have been through training have probably seen it out there. And while I like the numbers game, I think from a conceptual level that it starts to teach you that some of the real benefits of 5S. There’s some other very practical simulations, which are much more hands-on. Since 5S is such a hands-on activity, especially the first three, which are the and then you have standardized and sustain, which are kind of the part that keeps the program going. I really like the hands-on simulations that you can do. There’s various nuts and bolts games that help you kind of practice 5S.

Kurtis:

I use one that’s also what I like to call the Knives, Forks and Spoons game, where you’re basically using one of the organizers that we all have in our kitchen and you give somebody that organizer with your knives, forks, and spoons all laid out. And then you give somebody else a pile of nice forks and spoons, maybe with some other things thrown in there, like pencils and pens, and you have a kind of a race set up so that both of them have to do five place settings.

Kurtis:

The key here is not to talk about who does it quicker, but I can tell you the one with the organizer always wins, but it’s more of what was your work day like. How easy was it for you when you were using that kitchen organizers that we have for our forks, knives and spoons versus the other person that was just pulling forks and knives and spoons out of a pile? What did that feel like?

Kurtis:

It’s so, so key that our 5S activities are really designed to make work life easier. If we can keep that in the forefront, I think things go a lot smoother. And those kinds of hands-on activities, I think are key while we’re teaching and training.

Maribeth:

Thanks for that. Let’s look at the answer to our polling question, and then I’m going to turn the question over to David. Okay. It looks like the majority of our audience is not currently using simulations as part of their sustainment activity. So it seems to me that it might be a great time, David for you to throw out another example of one of your favorite simulations that maybe folks can use.

David:

I think Kurtis may have mentioned it as the nuts and bolts game from GBMP. That’s always been a really good one. It’s very simple and straightforward.

David:

I’ll actually tell you a funny story. If you’re not familiar with that simulation, the idea is you get a whole can or a bucket of bolts and you have to build a widget if you will, and dissolve different sizes of screws and washers and nuts and whatever in there. The idea is initially you give it to somebody and they’re supposed to make the widget that you’ve given them and you give them no direction, no standards, no nothing, and you time it. Then the second time around, you can , you give them a shadow board, you lay out the pieces that they need, and they do it in no time flat.

David:

Well it was funny. One time I did that simulation with the group and in the first scenario where you give them a whole bucket of bolts and they got to make it, and usually people stress out and they sweat and they never make it, this guy made in like 20 seconds. It was a fricking riot. Everybody in there was looking at him like, “What the heck?” We all had a lot of fun. If that’s the idea there … are there simulations and techniques that you can use to make 5S fun. I mean that was a riot. I’ve never seen that before. People, they got the concept regardless of the little bit of fun that we had there to standardize your workspace.

David:

Truth be told another way of having some fun with this is to actually have people go home and have some fun with their kids, like maybe attack in the playroom or wherever they keep their tools in their garage and whatnot, and have some fun with it. Take your before and afters and then bring it into work and show everybody what it was that you did. Just very simple sharing type of exercise. It gets people on board. You’ll see some pretty cool stuff that people bring in from home.

David:

I had a client, they took their toy room with all their kids, and I mean there was stuff everywhere, so it was a great picture. And of course, what they did instead was they got a bunch of those colored bins and whatnot and started organizing them all. The girl stuff was in … what did she use … I think she used yellow bins and the boy’s stuff, they used blue bins and they separated things color-coding wise, which is pretty cool. So you can have fun with it. Bringing it home kind of helps.

Maribeth:

Awesome. Thanks for that. There’s another serious topic that was mentioned quickly earlier, and I want to make sure we cover off on this one. It is the topic of audits. We’re going to put up a poll for the audience regarding audit, and I’d appreciate you taking the time to answer this. While that’s happening, I would love to start with Kurtis. How do audits help sustain? I think we know they do. How often, and what’s your experience from the manufacturing floor of what you should look at?

Kurtis:

The best success that I’ve seen and I think if you do some reading, you’ll find this in some various books and literature is what we call tiered audits. It flows very, very nicely and it helps connect the 5S and the Pfizer system in the audit. So daily, and even by shift, if you’re running a three shift operation, the operators on the floor they should be doing a very quick audit slash more of a checklist to sustain the 5S in that area.

Kurtis:

The next level, or the tier two audits would be the supervisor. And that I would suggest that the supervisors would do the weekly audits. That’s again, to check not the operators, but that the check sheets on the floor are catching what we want, and so that we have a good chance for the audits to be successful. And then the third tier of the audit system is when management, or maybe the lead continuous improvement person at the site comes in and does a formal audit with a formal rating system.

Kurtis:

Oh, and that should be done either every two weeks or monthly. I would suggest, especially in the beginning every two weeks. With those three connected to each other, and I’m focused on getting the scores up to where it’s appropriate, say if you have a one to five score, you want at least to get a 3.5 to four, I think those three through three different tiers work out tremendous. It reinforces several steps along the way. It reinforces the importance of the daily check sheet, the supervisor obviously being part of the 5S audit system, and then also the senior leadership, the management showing how important the 5S audits are.

Kurtis:

The other thing that it does, which is kind of fun, is it gives a chance for different departments, different areas to compete against each other. And something from my past that was really cool, we did have the warehouse that continued to score low. After a few months with those audits, they came to me and said, “We don’t want to be low anymore. We’re sick of it. We want to be the top against all the other groups.” That then spurred an actual kaizen that we went and did. And from there on out the warehouse did score in the top rung and they were extremely proud of it. Oh by the way, when I say the warehouse, it wasn’t the warehouse management; it was the warehouse operators that wanted to get their scores up.

Maribeth:

Thanks for that. I’d love to put up the results of the poll if we could. All right. It looks like we have a good mix here. How often are you conducting audits? We see 36% of respondents said weekly, 43% said monthly, 14% said quarterly, and we had one response for annually. But it sounds to me from what you said, Kurtis, that having a sort of tiered approach is really the best practice there.

Kurtis:

That’s what I’ve seen in my past. Again not only in my own organization that I’ve experienced, but several of the organizations that have had the tiered audits, it seems to work out extremely well. It’s a lot of work, but it’s the payoff’s definitely there.

Maribeth:

Yeah. .

David:

I wanted to add something too, if I could. Regarding audits, one thing to keep in mind. I remember Bruce Hamilton reminded me of this years ago that the audits are all about communication. At the end of the day, the whole point of them isn’t some scoring or some chart, or checking off a list, and Kurtis knows this, but it’s all about creating an atmosphere where people are talking to one another. They’re actually thinking about what worked well? What help do they need? What ideas do you have? What could we do to make things better? And it’s all about opening that line of communication that we talked about in the very beginning, even with COVID in mind, to always made sure communication is there and it’s flowing and it’s vibrant and it’s got everybody included.

David:

Remember; I know audits has a bad name, but that’s because it’s abused. It’s not used the way it should be. The tiered approach Kurtis mentioned, along with realizing the ultimate goal is opening communication and figuring out what’s working and what isn’t is really key.

Kurtis:

Yeah. One other point that I’d like to put forward, I think it re-emphasizes some of the points we’ve already made. If you can when you’re doing your 5S audits, make sure you take pictures of the good stuff. So if you see a particular area, that’s done something above and beyond, or if you see just a good overall 5S look to an area, take those photos, get them up. It reinforces all the positive things we talked about, but it also helps on the communication like David was just talking about also.

Maribeth:

I’ve realized that we’ve gone over our allotted time, but we have a bunch of people still hanging on the line, so thank you to the audience for your patience with us as we continue to talk about these topics. We’re going to begin wrapping things up, but I want to welcome the audience to put feedback in the chat mechanism about this format, because it seems to me that this conversation format has really spurred some great comments and questions from the audience. I’d like to ask the audience, if they’d like to see the same kind of approach going forward, and maybe we even extend to 45 minutes. So any opinions from our audience, our frequent flyers about that are welcomed to be added to the chat. You can feel free to do those at this time.

Maribeth:

I also want to let you know that we do have some questions remaining to answer from the audience. We’re going to take those and we will send out a response to everyone who’s participated in the webinar with the answers to those questions for you since we’re out of time to answer those today.

Maribeth:

I do want to thank you, David and Kurtis. Thank you to our viewers for your questions.

The post Keeping Continuous Improvement Alive During Pandemic Times appeared first on SafeWork Insider.

Time wasted searching for a tool is a significant‌ ‌problem‌ ‌for‌ ‌many‌ ‌operations.‌ ‌In‌ ‌fact,‌ ‌studies‌ ‌show‌ ‌that‌ ‌nearly‌ ‌20%‌ ‌of‌ ‌a‌ ‌worker’s‌ ‌day‌ ‌is‌ ‌spent‌ ‌on‌ ‌wasteful‌ ‌activities‌ ‌such‌ ‌as‌ ‌searching‌ ‌for‌ ‌tools.‌ ‌ ‌

In a 2020 webinar, David‌ ‌Visco,‌ ‌author‌ ‌of‌ ‌‌5s‌ ‌Made‌ ‌Easy‌‌ ‌and‌ ‌founder‌ ‌of‌ ‌‌the‌ ‌5S‌ ‌Store‌,‌ ‌shared ‌tips‌ ‌and‌ ‌ tricks‌ ‌for‌ ‌5S organization and tool‌ ‌control.‌ ‌This post is a transcript of that webinar.

You‌ ‌will‌ ‌learn:‌ ‌

• Why‌ ‌tool‌ ‌control‌ ‌should‌ ‌be‌ ‌a‌ ‌part‌ ‌of‌ ‌your‌ ‌5S‌ ‌system.‌ ‌
• Different‌ ‌methods‌ ‌of‌ ‌tool‌ ‌control;‌ ‌what‌ ‌is‌ ‌best‌ ‌for‌ ‌when?‌ ‌
• The‌ ‌benefits‌ ‌of‌ ‌color-coding‌ ‌tools‌ ‌
• Methods‌ ‌to‌ ‌help‌ ‌sustain‌ ‌tool‌ ‌control‌ ‌standards‌ ‌

Tool Control supplies from The 5S Store

Transcript from the Tool Control Best Practices Webinar

Maribeth (host):

I’d like to introduce our speaker. David Visco is a 5S expert. Beginning in 1985, David launched his career as a warehouse control manager running a distribution center that managed inventory of over $500 million in value. As he furthered his career, he gained extensive experience across warehouse, production planning, logistics, and materials management. Using 5S in the workplace, he saw a unique opportunity and a need for a 5S resource.

David:

Thanks, Maribeth.

Maribeth:

In 2006, he founded the 5S Store, the first online store dedicated entirely to 5S. The 5S Store provides a massive range of 5S products. In 2015, his book, 5S Made Easy, was published. Today he frequently speaks publicly on the topic of 5S best practices. Take it away, David.

David:

Thank you, Maribeth, and thanks for coming today, everybody. I hope you’re doing well. All right, let’s talk about some tool control best practices. So our agenda today: Why tool control should be proud of your 5S system. Different methods of tool control; what is best for when? The benefits of color-coding tools. The methods to help sustain tool control standards. How tool control can help reduce cross-contamination in the workplace. It’s a pretty hot topic these days. And at the end, we’ll take questions. All right.

Why tool control should be part of your 5S system.

David:

So you may not be aware of this, but 25% of the workday, the average worker spends searching for tools, materials, or information. 25%. Imagine if you have 10, 50 or 100 employees or workers on the floor. How much time is being wasted just searching for tools, materials, or info? Regarding tools, proper tool control can help improve safety as there’s less opportunity to get hurt digging into toolboxes and drawers. I don’t know about you, but I know there’s been plenty of times I’ve done that on my own at my house or in that lovely utensil drawer that happens to have a knife in it and getting cut up and whatnot.

David:

That happens at work way too often, so tool control can help remove that. The morale of your team’s going to increase too, because as tool control reduces the stress of searching for what’s needed to do the job. Tool control, so it helps as a visual reminder at a glance when something is missing and what it is that’s missing. It also helps increasing efficiency by repeated, learned behavior. So it’s also known as muscle memory. Now, if you’re always reaching for that tool in the same spot all the time that you’ve set out with the tool shadow or whatnot, you’re just going to be more efficient because you always got to know where that tool is.

David:

Unfortunately, the pandemic caused an increase in germ-spreading concerns, right? So proper tool control is an effective method, it helps reduce that spread. So I’m going to go through a number of different methods of tool control.

Different‌ ‌methods‌ ‌of‌ ‌tool‌ ‌control;‌ ‌what‌ ‌is‌ ‌best‌ ‌when?‌ ‌

Pegboards:

First one we’re going to talk about is pegboards. They’re available for you to put anywhere really. They come in steel or polypropylene, and depending on your needs, the steel is really good if you have a lot of heavy duty tools, and it’s just a more robust environment, you’ve got the steel, or for just a regular manufacturing space, you’ve got the polypropylene. They’re both great.

They come with dozens of different hooks that you can use for these. So you can really custom make them fit your needs. The polypropylene is eight square feet per board. So if you get two boards in a pack, you’ve got 16 square feet to organize your tools with, and you just screw them to a wall. With the steel, they come in multiple sizes. You’ve got 24 by 24 inches, 18 by 36, and 24 by 42 inches. Okay, so we’re going to move on from there. You’ve also got those boards, the steel ones, that could be configured into these space-efficient, mobile tool boards.

So the peripheral board, which is the item on the left, can hold up to 10 sliding boards within a frame. That frame that you see them in, you can move it wherever you need it, so you don’t have to install anything. The great thing is, you can just put it where you need it in the best of use. The idea here is, this will hold up to 10 panels in one frame. In the picture here, you’ll see there are five. But the great thing is, space efficiency wise, you could just take these and roll them out, put all the tools you need and roll them right back in. Each panel, each door will hold up to 220 pounds. So you could get a lot of tools in there and a lot of heft.

Then you’ve got the double-sided mobile cart, which is another great solution, so that you can put tools wherever you need them. Right? They have heavy duty casters, which is great, so you can load hundreds of pounds of tools on that mobile tool board. The idea behind them being mobile is you could just move them easily. And the hooks for these are in the dozens so you can just really configure whatever it is you need.

Okay, from there we’re going to talk about tool shadow boards. So these have become really popular the last few years. The shadow boards are available in off-the-shelf or custom. There are three type of boards depending on your needs. So there’s one type of board that’s for everyday use in a warehouse and then there’s others that are good for food grade and constant caustic wash downs. So you just pick the material that you need for your particular situation. The great thing is they’re all scratch-resistant, UV-resistant, and chemical-resistant, and they won’t rust. So they’re very heavy duty solution. With the off-the-shelf boards, the picture on the right, the benefits of those is they’re heavy duty, they’re wall-mounted, so you could just put them on a wall that you happen to have available.

Actually, we had one client that needed these on every single workstation. So I think there were 32 workstations in this area, and they actually mounted them right to the piece of equipment, which was pretty cool. Now for other customers, and actually that customer too, he needed some of those that would be mobile. So there’s a mobile frame available for this so that you can put them wherever you need to. They really improve efficiency because, how many times have you been in a manufacturing floor and you’ve gone looking for a broom or a dust pan? All that time is just wasted.

Cleaning Tool Shadow Boards

So with these that I made for the most common cleaning tools that are out there, it’s a nice, simple solution for you. And the great thing is, they ship within a day or two, so they’re always available. They can be put on a wall or mobile as you see there and they’re made to your specs. So whatever it is you need on there, you work with the custom team and you have it made however you need it. You can put your logo on there or our artists can also design it to really wow. So if you have a lot of company tours or whatnot and you really want it to wow people that show up, we can do that too.

Other folks just want a very nice, simple, custom board made to put wherever they need it. We can do that as well. Again, there’s hundreds of hooks available for these. We’ve seen often where people have had tools that are one-offs, right? So they’re probably made in the manufacturing place for some special need and there may not be a particular already made hook for that.

Foam Tool Organizers

Next, we have foam tool organizers. Who doesn’t love foam tool, right? So it’s been around for quite a while. It helps improve safety, because like we talked before, if you’ve got a whole drawer here full of tools, you can easily cut yourself. The great thing is, with the double, two colors here, when the tool is out, it’s very evident what’s missing, which is nice. They come in three different options. It’s do it yourself, where you get a kit and you cut it out on your own, which is always a lot of fun. For anybody that’s done that, they know how much fun that can be. We have various sizes available as well. Then we also have custom sizes.

The great thing with tool foam is it’s so easy to use as a solution, just to make things easier on your folks. What we can also do is we can actually do the cutouts for you. So if you’ve ever cut out foam in the past, you probably realize it doesn’t look nearly as nice as what you see there in the picture, right? It also takes quite a bit of time to do. We had one client that was doing 36 drawers like this and they actually had one guy doing them for about a week.

It’s a lot of labor to do them all on your own. So what we do is, we’re able to do that for you. You work with that team and we do all the cutouts for you. All you do is order, and boom, it shows up and you put them in your drawer. Keep in mind though, if you’re in constant change always changing out the tools that you’re using, tool foam may not be the best solution for you, because you’re always going to be cutting them up. But if you have some standards in place and you’re always using the same tools, it’s really a nice, simple solution.

Tool Shadow Tape

So from there we have tool shadow tape. So this is a budget-friendly approach. So what we can do here is, you have tool shadow tape that’s available on rolls, or we have these precut shadow tapes, 50 of the most popular tools that are out there, like a hammer, a screwdriver or whatnot. Both of these are to apply and to remove when you need them to. So if you lay it down, right? So if it was just like a vinyl tape, just a regular vinyl tape, and you put that down on the board, first of all, doing that would be really painful and it would stick to itself or that vinyl tape trying to get it off can be a real pain and you wouldn’t be able to reapply it.

With both of these materials here, if you had to remove it, you could do so and it’ll last for a couple of changes. So that’s really great. They’re high performance and they’ll last and they’re also fade-resistant. So with the precuts, you’ve got a couple of blank sheets in the back too. So you get the precut shapes and then you got a couple of blanks in the back if you have certain tools that you might not do on your own, or you could get a whole roll. If you get a whole roll, you just simply on the back of the tool shadow tape, you put your tool, then you trace it out the pencil or whatnot, you get a pair of scissors, you cut it out, and then you peel the backing and you place the tool shadow on the board, or wherever it is you using it.

It’s that simple. It’s a great, great product. So they’re great for tool boards. You can even use them for cleaning stations. If you want to do your own shadows for rooms or dust mops, or whatnot, you could do that. They’re also good for medical instruments set up. So if you have any kind of a gauge or whatnot, you can create a simple little tool shadow for that too.

I have seen people use the shadows even when they doing 5S in the office. So if you want to turn around and put a tool shadow down for where your stapler is going to be, have at it. One thing I would suggest you do though is you want to label that tool shadow with the word stapler on the shadow itself, not below it. Because the idea is when it’s missing, you want to know what it is that’s supposed to go back there. Okay? The thing is is, this is a nice, neat, and easy way to organize your workspace. They’re also available in many different colors.

The‌ ‌benefits‌ ‌of‌ ‌color-coding‌ ‌tools‌ ‌

If you try to color coordinate or keep certain tools and certain areas, you can have the color coordinating there to keep everything in place. Then we mentioned color-coding there. You can also color-code your tools with items such as Plasti Dip, a pretty common material. The idea here is, you’ll take the tools, you’ll dip in the color that you want, and then you dry, and there you go. Now you get a nice, color-coded tool.

Where we see people doing a lot is, let’s say they have a bunch of work cells, and in one work cell, maybe they decide that work cell is going to be green. Okay? So you might use the Plasti Dip in green to dip your tools, and add color-coded cleaning tools as well with green. So you’d have a green barrel, green push broom, green dust pan, et cetera, and the tools would also line up with that too.

I’ve also seen people just use a colored vinyl tape to mark the hand of a tool. So that works as well. Where this really helps big time is in the whole cross-contamination issue that everybody’s concerned about these days. If each of your work cells has a standard of being a certain color, you should never see your color in somebody else’s work cell. Right? If that happens, that means that some standard that you put in place broke down. So this is a nice, nice tool to use, if you will, for raising issues to the surface, because if somebody is grabbing your tool, that means they either lost theirs or they just need your tool as well. Who knows what?

The idea is to keep the tools organized and sufficiently marked for your particular work cell so that it reduces cross-contamination, because you don’t want to be touching somebody else’s tools, at least not in today’s world.

Methods‌ ‌to‌ ‌help‌ ‌sustain‌ ‌tool‌ ‌control‌ ‌standards‌ ‌

So how do you go about implementing these tool control changes if you’ve never had that before? As with any change, the best way to avoid any issues you’re going to have is to make sure you include everybody. One way to do that with tool control is to run a pilot. Same as when we implement 5S all across the site, we always choose one area first to play around with.

Build a Team

The best way to do that is pick one area that you know that you can succeed in, right? Something that’s not overwhelming. Okay? What you can do is get everybody that’s in the area together and you’re going to talk things through. So first you’ll have your kickoff, and then from there, what you’re going to want to do is find a leader. Get somebody in that group that’s going to be the lead and help keep things moving forward once the implementation is done. Then like I said, build consensus, right? Have an open discussion, reviewing the benefits and tool control with everybody. So we’ve already gone through a bunch of benefits there so you could go back through the slide and share that.

But you want to make sure, with any change, that people understand why they’re even going to bother doing it, right? Not just because the boss said so. Okay? As with any change, you want to make sure that people are all on board. So to do that, have a brainstorming session, get everybody feeling comfortable with… given their ideas, discussing their concerns, right as it says, handle objections. You want to make sure everybody’s objection is addressed, and that you guys, you just figure out exactly how you’re going to do it and what’s going to work and what isn’t.

Have a Red Tag Event

From there, what I’d suggest doing, before you start implementing the tool control itself, have a red-tag event. It makes no sense to put a tool that you never use into a tool control situation. So why not have your red-tag event, clear out, go through all the desks, all the toolboxes, everything that you have and make sure that you only have the tools that you need. Then once you’ve done that, you’ve set it up for success. You went through all these steps and you’re good to go to implement it. From there, you want to document and roll up the program across the site, or maybe just the next work cell or the next department. You don’t have to do the entire company all at once after you’ve done your pilot.

You can pick and choose depending on the size of your place and what any challenges might be or production needs or whatnot. But as with any new policy, you’ll want to get it documented and then communicated to all the employees that it affects, right? Maybe a lunch and learn. It’s a nice way to implement something new. Get everybody together, have some pizza, whatnot, and talk about this new thing that you’re going to implement. Make sure that it’s an open quorum. People should really feel comfortable asking questions, right? Because maybe during the pilot though, some questions weren’t brought up.

Keep the Ball Rolling

So as you’re rolling it out to more people, it’s continuous improvement, right? So you’re always supposed to be making it a little bit better every day. Frequent updates on progress helps to put some social pressure on those that have not yet adopted. So what’s that mean? You want to make sure that this becomes part of your everyday life from what everybody does. So to do that, you’re going to want to monitor the situation. Okay. And you want to make sure that people are following the standards. So how do you do that? You’re going to have to sustain, put controls and then sustain it.

So if you have a weekly department huddle, which I’d suggest you do, make sure tool control’s on that list, make sure that all the solutions that you’ve put in place are easily accessible. So what I’m talking about there is, if you’ve decided to put pegboards in place, you want to make sure you have plenty of hooks, right? The worst thing that could happen is somebody wants to go add a new tool to the board and they don’t have the proper hook available. So set up Kanbans for your tool hooks. Same thing with the tool shadow tape. If you’re going to use the DIY tool shadow tape, make sure you have a Kanban in place so that you never run out.

You also want to make sure to hold the team accountable for following the new standard. That’s really important. So if everybody’s agreed on the standard and you’re implementing it and you’re doing it, whatnot, for those folks that maybe aren’t following along, you need to hold them accountable. Really important. Again, you don’t have to seek perfection, right? You’re always trying to improve, small improvements regularly. I’d also suggest, consider adding tool control to your 5S checklist, your daily 5S checklist, and your weekly 5S audits.

Over time, as audits are meant to do, you’ll find that the improvements will come along, because if you have an open communication system through your audit process, you’ll be constantly improving as you go. Okay, with that, I’m going to give it to Maribeth for questions.

Audience Questions

Maribeth:

Thanks, David. And thanks to the viewers who are sending in questions as we speak. So let’s get started with David responding. Our first question for you, David, is: Explain how Kanban can be used in sustaining tool control.

David:

Well, the only place where Kanban is going to come in play is just making sure that you never run out of the tool control tools, if you will, that you’ve decided to use. So let’s say that as a team you’ve decided you want pegboards. So you want to make sure that you use Kanbans to keep track of when you need to reorder the pegboards or the tool shadow tape or any other material there. It’s really Kanbans just really in place just to make sure that you never run out of the materials that you’ve decided to implement. As far as tools itself, if that’s what you’re talking about, that’s a different situation.

Tools itself is like, and I’m not sure if that’s what the person meant, like how do I use Kanban to make sure I never run out of hammers, screwdrivers, nuts or that type of thing? That’s like any material that you want to put under Kanban and control. You just set the Kanbans in place. I’m not sure if I totally understand the question.

Maribeth:

Thanks, David. We have another question that has rolled in about 5S basics. You had mentioned a red-tag event, can you please explain what a red-tag event is?

David:

Oh, sure. Sometimes I assume from the 5S Store that everybody knows what that is. So shame on me. A red-tag event is part of the first part of 5S, which is for sort. So the idea with the red-tag event is you get a handful of red tags handy and pens and whatever, and then you get the group together. Everybody goes through the chosen area all at once. So you’re opening up every draw, every cabinet, every crevice, every corner, top to bottom, left to right, that entire area should be touched to find anything at all that isn’t needed to get the job done. On the right tag, they have certain dispositions form.

So what you do is you have a red tag area, so anything that you think should be in the red tag, that should get red-tagged or get moved to the red tag area. Then the supervisors and the people in the area will actually figure out what should be done with those tools. Maybe you don’t need them anymore, so you can have a giveaway, a company giveaway, or maybe there’s other departments that need them. One of the great things of red tagging is a lot of materials show up that nobody knew was there, and then once your catalog them and you keep track of them, you can save a ton of money because other departments might need what it is that’s hidden in your department.

That’s why I’d suggested red tagging first so that you get everything out of there before you set it in order.

Maribeth:

Great. Thanks, David. Here’s another great question about how you use boards. If I have a tool that I’m constantly using, am I supposed to take it off the board, use it, and then immediately put it back?

David:

So that’s a great question. We actually get that question a lot. The answer there would be no. So if you’re continually using a tool, I mean, all day long, maybe putting it down for a minute or two and using it again and whatever, you’re not going to keep putting it back in the shadow. That’s just silly, right? The idea would be that if you have to leave the work area for a bit, either go to the restroom or break or leave for the day for that matter, you want to make sure that you always have all your tools put away neat and orderly so if anybody else should need them, like a second shift for example, they know exactly where to find them.

Maribeth:

Great. Here’s our next question. So here’s somebody who’s looking for some real honesty. They said, “How difficult is it really to do your own cutouts in foam?“

David:

Well, for anybody that’s done them, you could all answer the question. It can be painful. It depends on what you want though. So if you don’t care how it looks and you just want the function, that which is fine, by the way, it doesn’t have to be beautiful and not by a long stretch, but if you don’t care how it looks and you’ve got the time to do it, you can do it, but it takes time. It’s easy enough to cut. So if you have a utility blade or an Exacto knife, you can cut them out easy enough.

It just, it does take an effort. And if you have a lot of drawers to do, it’s going to take you some time, and truth be told, your hands will get a little worn as you’re going on from one tool drawer to the next. But if you don’t have to do a lot all at once, there’s no reason why you can’t. It isn’t that difficult, it just takes time.

Maribeth:

Next question that’s come in asks, “What type of businesses do you think benefit most from using tool control methods?“

David:

Wow, that’s interesting. Well, if we’re talking like hand tools, it would be any manufacturing facility, really. I mean, anytime that you have a lot of different tools that you’re using and that other people need too, if you want to make sure that you’ve got some controls in place so that you know exactly where to go and where to get your tools, the other benefit of all this of course is that you can work more efficiently if you know exactly what your tools are like I mentioned. So really anybody that has tools in their operation should put tool control in place because it’ll just make life easier for them.

Where I’ve seen tool control used a lot is in the food service industry. They’ve use the color-coded cleaning tools for food service. That works out really well that way because you need to have line clearance in food manufacturing, because you don’t want a squeegee, for example, from one department making its way over to another department that’s using different meats and whatever they’re doing there. So it’s really pretty broad, there isn’t one in particular. If you keep losing your tools and you’re always searching for your tools, regardless of what company or business type you are in, you need tool control. It’s really that simple.

Maribeth:

I think I need tool control in my garage!

David:

I hear that a lot.

Maribeth:

So our next viewer asks, “What’s your favorite tool control method? What works best?”

David:

Well, it would depend on the need. I think tool shadow tape’s pretty cool. It’s super easy and you get the user involved and you can just make it your own, which is all part of it, right? You’re developing it, designing it, and making it your own. From a DIY standpoint, doing it yourself. I think that’s great. I think the advent of the tool control boards, the shadow boards, is really pretty sweet too, because it looks great and it’s so visual and so useful and efficient, especially if you make it mobile. I guess those would be my two, the DIY shadow tape and the tool shadow boards. They’re really pretty neat, very useful.

Maribeth:

Great. We’re onto our final question here. What are some ways to reinforce tool control in a business that runs multiple shifts?

David:

That’s a great question. Yeah, we see that a lot, right? Shift change. The best thing to do there, if you’ve got let’s just say shift one and shift two. Shift two would do a daily checklist. So when shift two comes on, they would have this checklist where they would verify that… I mean, it should be for any of the 5S categories, but for tool control, for example, let’s just say you made a tool control checklist, four or five things you’ve got to check off, all the tools we’ll put back properly, there was nothing missing, et cetera, et cetera. You just make this checklist.

The second shift when they come in, they would fill that checklist out and there should also be a place they can make any notes that they might want to make. So then maybe there’s a third shift too. They would do the same thing. So in the morning, when the first shift comes back in, they’re going to be doing the same thing for the third shift. So the first shift would wind up doing a 5S checklist for the third shift. So everybody’s checking on each other to make sure that the tool control standards that were put in place are actually working and that they’re being followed.

It’s really important that the management supervisors make sure that everybody knows this isn’t to pester one another or to point fingers, it’s all about just improving it for one another so that everybody can have an easier, more efficient day due to these new things that are put in place. So over time, that’ll help a lot.

Maribeth:

That was our final question, David.

David:

Okay. Thanks for all the questions. Take care.

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