Many organizations that start down the path of Lean Enterprise begin the journey implementing the perceived philosophy of 5S. It is becoming apparent to us during our travels that most organizations truly do not understand the power of the methodology in order to save money, increase throughput and enhance their Health & Safety.
More often, we see the translation of 5S into random acts of organization inside the enterprise instead of using this as a powerful holistic tool to improve the organization. You can have your area clearly defined and organized but it will still not increase the throughput or quality goals you desire. Every time an employee needs to seek materials, tools or information you are probably loosing value add time in increments of 10 minutes. Many organizations encourage their managers, supervisors and others to implement 5S principals just to get rid of the clutter and make the environment look great … but with minimal focus on improvement.
Your Work Place Organization can be categorized into 2 areas:
Enterprise Initiatives are areas where 5S can be applied that do not directly contribute to the value add process. These can include cafeteria’s, directional signs, bulletin boards, etc. These are more to improve the effective communication within the organization and the quality of life for our employees. Just like everything else in order to have accountability you need an owner … meaning a name not a department to sustain and enhance your enterprise 5S initiatives. A very good enterprise initiative is to organize your bulletin boards and assign them an owner. A great tip is to make sure each board has a "Board Owner Tag" … This tag should have the individual’s picture, name and an area to indicate when the board was last updated. Now employees can walk past the board and look at the update date and if it has changed, stop to see what new information has been added. Notices on boards should never stay up longer than 30 days or they just become stagnant and meaningless.
Another excellent Enterprise initiative is to install a phone station board complete with an extension list and VSWI (Visual Standard Work Instructions) for emergency calling, paging, locating supervisors etc. Simple but yet very effective and it communicates the power of using work instructions. Simple Safety Stations also show that your care about the Health and Safety of your employees.
Work Flow Improvements … We are often asked how do we quantify the savings achieved through the implementation of 5S or what should my project plan for implementing 5S look like? So you don’t get it … 5S is an investment and not an expense. Just like any other tool it must be properly deployed to help achieve the perfect process. We concede that most organizations get the sort part of 5S and even know how to add labels and shadow boxes but they seem to fail to go much beyond the initial exercise.
Contact us to learn more abut the potential on improving work flow by the use of Work Place Organization methodologies.
Work Place Analysis. To identify the most efficient way to organize your operation.
Standardization Development. To ensure successful sustainability.
Training. To create awarness, improve skills and empower your employees to maximize the use of available resources and eliminate waste.
Materials Sourcing. Directing you to the best suppliers we have been able to find, in order to reduce your cost of implementation on materials such as:
After many years of implementing work place organization with the use of several methodologies, such as 5S, we know how to design your Visual Enterprise and where to find the best products and services for your journey.
A Visual Work Place is an enabler for Enterprise Excellence
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