Lean 5S: A Manager’s Strategy for Sustaining
The lean 5S system contains 5-steps to achieving a more organized, controlled and efficient manufacturing plant. These steps are Sort, Set-in-Order, Shine, Standardize and Sustain. And in this article, I discuss the fifth and easiest step in the 5S process, and that is the Sustain step.
Many 5S efforts have yielded incredible initial results but the housekeeping improvements just slipped away over time. Later, the embittered employees make comments such as, “Oh that 5S thing, we tried that before. It didn’t work". Meanwhile the executives say, “We invested in lean, but the employees just never embraced it".
So why do 5S efforts slip away in some plants and succeed in other plants? Well, when you understand the true nature of the fifth S, Sustain, then you will easily succeed with long-lasting results. Here are the main principles that managers need to understand as kaizen teams transition into the sustain phase of their 5S work:
- THE BIG SECRET: The big secret to sustaining your 5S results is recognizing that there is no such thing as “Sustain”. There is only “Improving” or “regressing”. Nothing in the entire world truly “sustains”. Even mountains erode over time. So, recognize that after your 5S Kaizen event, you need a plan for continuous improvement (CI) activity. Here, your CI efforts don’t need to be 100% focused on 5S. You can also start to tackle implementing Single Piece Flow, SMED, Kanban, Visual Factory or TPM. The key is that you keep the ball moving forward. The best way to do this is with a rolling-5 action plan list. You see, the CI activity doesn’t need to be overwhelming. Do this by having a small remnant team continue to meet after your initial kaizen event. Then, have this team make a thorough CI action plan list. Then this team should prioritize and select their top five actions. They should then work on this short list of five actions and when something gets completed off the list, then they simply add another action. They goal is to always keep 5 active action items and make continuous progress against those rolling five action items. Just remember, there is no such thing as sustaining. There’s only improvement or regression.
- Structure with credible leaders. Unfortunately, some plants decide to resource their lean leadership structure by using low performing leaders because they are easy to reassign into open lean roles. Strong leaders are valued in the current assignments and can be difficult to backfill and because of this difficulty, they often don’t get tapped to lead the organizations lean efforts. But taking the easy route and staffing your lean efforts with low performing leaders is a recipe for failure. You need strong, valued and credible resources to lead your lean program.
- Employees need 5S wins. During your 5S Kaizen events, commit to listening to employees and solving some of the daily problems that they face. When you fix operator problems, you are building process ownership, and establishing process ownership is a cornerstone principle of the 5S methodology. If your lean initiative is only about achieving corporate objectives then your employees will sense that you're doing lean to them and instead of with them. When employees feel this way, they won't support you and your lean results just won't be sustainable over the long run. So, make sure that you bake-in employee generated projects into your overall lean efforts.
- Eyes on the prize. If your managers are not regularly walking the production floor, then you need to change the culture. Call it management-by-walking-around or MUDA walks or GEMBA walks or daily factory tours but whatever you call it and however it happens, managers really need to walk the production floor a couple times a day. These management walks provide an extra set of eyes to identify expectation gaps. The key word here is “expectation”. If factory managers don’t have clear and consistent 5S expectations, then the plant’s 5S momentum will indeed backslide into the dumpster. The best way to monitor your shopfloor progress is to see it firsthand.
The Sustain step of the 5S methodology is the easiest of them all and although its that last step of 5S, its success needs to be preplanned and properly structured into the fabric of your plant.
Stay connected with news and updates!
If you want some weekly T4T wisdom coming straight to your inbox for your reading pleasure - look no further! Join our mailing list to receive the latest blogs and updates.
Don't worry, your information will not be shared.
We hate SPAM. We will never sell your information, for any reason.
