5S Archives - Better Process Solutions

5S every day, not just once a month!

A colleague who works in logistics is responsible for two warehouses in the same city. Both sites have been implementing 5S. One of them has been successful, while the other is not. He asks me how it is possible to have different results. Although both locations received the same training and support, their implementation approach was different. Only one of those teams was practicing 5S every day.

Change behaviors to do 5S every day

Have you ever tried to lose weight? How well did it go? I tried many times with no sustainable results until I learn what I was doing wrong. Each time I failed; I was following a diet. I treated my weight loss as individual events with a common goal. However, healthy eating is for every day, not for special occasions. It wasn’t until I change my eating habits that were able to lose weight for good.

Like with weight loss, 5S will not be successful until people build new behaviors. Get used to putting things back in their place immediately after use takes time. After all, it’s easier to leave things where you last used them. The problem is to remember where that was. For sustainable results, you have to change that behavior by creating new habits.

5S is an activity to practice every day, throughout the day. Before launching the program, leadership needs to agree on how to achieve the fifth S, sustain. The effort requires the participation of all site leaders. Everybody needs to walk the workplace every day to verify cleanliness and organization conditions. If shadow boards have empty spots, it means that tools are out of place. If the material is missing from their allocated staging floor areas, it means that material is missing. For instance, those examples represent future problems, either searching time or delays.

How to create the habits

While setting up the materials and equipment, work on how to create new habits. Ask the team how they could trigger the desired response. Once they finish work, what will trigger putting the tools or equipment back on their location.

For example, empty printer cartridges go inside a labeled box in the office supply room. However, some people throw them in the trash or leave them in their office or cubicle. To build the habit, add how to dispose of the cartridge as part of the instructions to change it. Also, include what the trigger would be for this action. For instance, a good time would be the completion of the printer testing. After confirmation that the printer is working, take the old cartridge to its designated location. The problem is that most people would decide to move it to a location later. And then, they don’t remember.

Sometimes, people convince themselves that it is better to put things back in their place at the end of the shift. Ask questions to understand why they think that way. Where they leave them throughout the day? Are there any safety hazards? Are they wasting time searching for them? Maybe the designated area is not the best. By working with the team to understand their reasons and creating a plan together, sustainability will have a better chance.

At times, like in the printer cartridge example, it makes sense to compromise. For example, have a mailbox by the door or entrance. They see it while walking out, take it, and move it to its place.

After launching the program, sustain it with 5S every day

That is the difference between the warehouse teams. One group completed all the kick-off event preparation in detail. After that, they completed the first three steps, leaving the areas with temporary marks. They planned to test locations and quantities before making them permanent. The problem is the responsible parties never follow-up. At that time, those temporary marks became permanent. And then, when things didn’t go as planned, people were discouraged to continue.

At the same time, the other team follows similar planning and initial execution steps. The only difference was that as part of their plan, they agreed on triggers for 5S activities. The senior supervisor and his team had on their leader standard work a daily 5S walk. They also had a board where they mark their visits and top three observations. This information was part of the daily huddle meetings. Also, the leadership group makes a point to acknowledge at least one positive comment every day. That simple action helps to enforce the desired behavior. For instance, supervisors celebrate each program milestone and recognize groups or individuals that achieve their 5S goals.

Forklift operators and clerks have their triggers for 5S activities as well. For example, lunch break is one of the triggers for the operators. With this one, they know it is time to park and charge their truck in one of the designated spaces.

By identifying what will signal the start of each 5S task, the group initiates to build the habit of doing 5S every day, all day. This way, their program for housekeeping and organization became a daily activity. They created new behaviors to ensure sustainability. For the other warehouse, it happens only when the warehouse was a mess or visitors were coming.

CI @ Home

Getting organized at home

According to the site Days of the Year, January is the month to get organized. Workplace organization is a recurrent subject for us in Better Process Solutions. However, today I will focus on home organization.

Home is where we go at the end of the day to wind down and recharge our batteries. But we cannot accomplish that if the house is cluttered. For instance, clutter is a significant source of stress in our lives.

Why clutter affect us?

Sherrie Bourg Carter wrote about why clutter causes stress in the Psychology Today blog. In her article, she indicated that clutter blasts our minds with excessive stimuli. As a result, our senses work overtime on stimuli that are not necessary or important. She also mentioned that clutter distracts us by drawing our attention away from what our focus should be. Besides, it constantly signals to our brains that our work is never done.

As a result, our brain is switching focus from the task we intend to do to the clutter around us. Every time we look at the mess, we start to have negative feelings. For example, you can experience guilt or embarrassment. Clutter causes anxiety and makes it more difficult to relax.

Benefits of getting organized at home

Reduced stress and anxiety levels.
More time and space around the house.
Save money, because you will not buy things to replace what you cannot find or will not pay your bills late.
Be able to relax, focus on what is important, and be more creative.

How to get organized at home

One of my favorites continuous improvement tools is 5S. 5S is a five steps method for housekeeping and organization. You can read how to organize your kitchen, closets, and garage in previous posts.

Practicing 5S at home can be a fun way of getting organized. When done in the workplace, 5S is a team activity. The people that work in the area participate in the process and contribute with ideas. You can do the same thing at home, with your spouse and kids.

Summary

Clutter hinders creativity and productivity. It increases your levels of stress and anxiety. Not only that, looking at the mess around you will cortisol. Elevated levels of cortisol cause depression. Thus, practicing organization is a way to keep your mental health in check.

In addition, can help to control your weight. While researching for this post, I came across the book Lose the Clutter, Lose the Weight. The author, Peter Walsh, build upon a study that showed that people with cluttered homes were 77% more likely to be overweight or obese. He thinks the reason is that people can’t make their best choices in a cluttered, messy, disorganized home.

In conclusion, getting organized will help you and your family to be healthier, have more creativity and productivity, and enjoy each other.

Reference

Bourg-Carter, S. (2012, March). Why Mess Causes Stress: 8 Reasons, 8 Remedies. [Blog post] Accessed 1/6/2021. Retrieved from https://www.psychologytoday.com/us/blog/high-octane-women/201203/why-mess-causes-stress-8-reasons-8-remedies

Daily & Events CI

What are the Kaizen’s pillars?

Kaizen or continuous improvement is the daily practice of creating small changes using low-cost common-sense solutions. Kaizen’s pillars or major activities are 5S, standardization, and waste elimination.

Where there is no standard, there can be no improvement. For these reasons, standards are the basis for both maintenance and improvement
Misaaki Imai

5S is the first of the Kaizen’s pillars

Housekeeping and 5S are basic activities for any continuous improvement effort. For instance, employees acquire self-discipline by practicing 5S daily. Without discipline, it is impossible to sustain a continuous improvement culture. Also, 5S helps to create a visual workplace.

In general, people feel uncomfortable when the problems are visible. Therefore, it is normal to hide or not uncover them to avoid undesired questions from the boss or dealing with them. However, you cannot fix what you cannot see. 5S and visual management make the out-of-standard situation easy to recognize. The objective is to see the problems and correct them as soon as possible.

Standardization is another kaizen’s major activity

When we fail to achieve the expected results, it is because the process fails. Many times, it fails because there is no standard. Each individual has a way to do things. Standard work is the safest, highest quality, and most efficient way to execute a particular task. Standardization is the practice of setting, communicating, following, and improving standards and standard work. The best way to achieve consistent results and minimize mistakes is to follow the standard work.

To improve the results, we have to improve the process. But we need to have standards in place before we try to improve it. That is why standardization is one of the earlier steps on the lean journey. Visual management is a way to standardize. It helps to recognize defects, inventory, waiting times, and other types of waste. Waste elimination is a cost-effective way to improve processes and reduce operating costs.

The first steps on the lean journey are to stabilize the process, create standards, and visual management. Process stabilization is achieved by practicing 5S and waste identification. Standards produce a clear image of the desired condition. You cannot fix what you don’t see. By making conditions out of standard visible, 5S, standards, and waste elimination are the pillars of kaizen or continuous improvement.

CI @ Home

How good is your wardrobe or closet organization? Is it a good place for 5S?

Every morning you stand in front of the closet looking at the clothes, wondering what to wear. Probably, you have a couple of suits that you rotated every week. The reason is not that you are trying to have a uniform or be practical, but because the closet is cluttered, and you cannot reach some areas. You may have clothes that you have not seen in years. If that is the case, then you need to work on your wardrobe or closet organization.

5S and your wardrobe or closet organization

All the house closets are perfect targets for 5S. However, this time I will focus on the bedroom closet. Follow the five steps for cleaning and organization, one at a time. The best way to see everything you have is to empty the closet. If you are using more than one, place all items in the same place to start sorting. When you finished sorting, decide the best location but do not put anything back until you clean the area. This time is going to be the best moment ever to vacuum and clean the entire closet. Find below a couple of tips for each step.

Sort

Sorting through the closet items should be an easy task. Look out for these things that you can get rid of without hesitation.

Old clothing, shoes, and accessories that you never wear, either because you don’t like them anymore or do not fit.
Mismatched socks
Clothing that is either in bad shape, broken or stained.
Eyeglasses with old prescriptions.
Old towels and bedding

You can do the following with the discarded items.

If the clothing is in good condition, donate it.
Donate old eyeglasses.
Fix or have someone fixing for you those items with missing buttons, broken zipper, of need a little adjustment job.
If you have dogs, you can use towels and other linen for them. You can also use some and donate the extras to your local shelter.

The wardrobe or closet organization is better when you Set in Order

You need to be able to see what you have without opening drawers or boxes. Use open shelves and boxes when need it.
Organize hangers to maximize the use of vertical space. For example, you can have blouses and shirts on top hanging space and below it another for skirts and pants.
Use drawer organizers and dedicate each drawer to one item type, for example, socks.
Divide your items by use or season, work clothes vs. home, summer vs. winter, and others.
If you have one available, you can designate one closet or space for bulky winter items.
Use shoe racks whenever possible, avoid using shoe boxes unless they are clear.

Shine the area

Clean all shelves and hanging systems.
You can paint the insides of the closet now.
Look for missing knobs, broken parts, loose screws, and other things. Repair what you can and replace what you need.

Standardize your wardrobe or closet organization

You can use temporary labels to identify what goes where, at least until you get used to it. Unless you do your laundry, you need to ensure that everybody sees, understands, and does the same.

Sustain the results

You don’t need to wait until spring to clean your closet or wardrobe. Put in a calendar to check your closet every other month or so.
As soon as you grab something that does not fit anymore, decide what to do with it. If you do not want to get rid of things that fast, designate a small area to put those items and check them as part of your closet review per calendar.

To clean and keep the house clean is everybody’s responsibility. You can make 5S a family activity, teach your kids how to do it, and have them check on their closets the same day you do. Doing this regularly, you will avoid planning how or where to build additional closet space for your clothes.

CI @ Home

Is your kitchen organized? Or need some 5S?

The kitchen is a place to make memories, not just-food. Years ago, my grandma was the queen of the kitchen. She reigned supreme in that space, and nobody dares to interrupt her while she was in the zone. I know this situation was similar for many families. Over time, these changes, and now families gathered around the kitchen to participate in food preparation and cooking.

Even children participate, mixing and preparing things. During friends and family meetings, everybody is in the kitchen while the meal is being prepared. For many, this is the place to plan parties and other family activities. The kitchen is then the heart and soul of the house.

Clutter in the kitchen

With everything happening there, it is easy to find some clutter. That is also the reason to keep it clean and organized at all times. Remember the 5S? The five steps cleaning and organization program is effective in the kitchen as well. You can read about the method and ideas for 5S in the house in either of these previous posts. What is 5S? How can I keep my pets stuff organized? How can you organize your garage? or How can I organize my books? Either one of those articles will help you to understand the 5S process.

5S for your kitchen organization

Plan your Kitchen 5S. You have no idea how much stuff you have stored on those cabinets and drawers until you empty them. Yes, you will have to empty every one of them and also the pantry, fridge, and freezer. Engage the family in this activity. If everybody participates, chances are, they will also help to keep it organized!

Designate areas to place items to keep, move out, and trash.
Think ahead of time how you want to organize the kitchen. Items that you use more frequently should go closer to the area where you are going to use them. For example, spices where you prepare the food and dishes, glassware, and silverware close to the dishwasher.
Have readily available the cleaning utensils and detergents you are going to use.
Go one cabinet at a time, including the drawers.
After the cabinets, take care of the pantry.
Check the fridge and freezer.
If you have a small desk or office area, include it as part of the project.

Things that you should be looking for while sorting the kitchen.

Things that we collect thinking that we can use them later, but never use.
- Plastic silverware and condiment packets from take-out orders.
- Utensils and kitchen tools from which you have double, or triple.
- Small appliances like waffle maker or rice cooker.
- Take-out menus
Expired items
- Spices lose flavor over time, while flour and sugar do not perform as well as fresh ingredients.
- Expired coupons, old shoppers
- Medicines
Broken or damaged things
- Warped food storage containers
- Mismatched containers and lids
- Old towels
Items that do not belong to the kitchen
- Old bills and receipts, last year calendar
- Power cords with no equipment, old cell phones, and TV remote controls
- Greetings cards, crafting supplies
- The user manual or warranty papers for appliances that you don’t have any more or are way beyond warranty

It will take quite some time to finish all this, but in the end, your kitchen will be ready for the next party. Enjoy!

Tools

Are you sure you have visual controls? Do you know the difference between visual control and a display?

Often people confuse visual controls with visual displays. A visual control calls for action while a display exhibits information. 5S, the five steps for cleaning and organization provides the basis to build a visual workplace. There are four different stages or types of visual management, display, calls for attention, organize behavior and defects prevention. Only the last three are considered visual controls, they show the standard and the actual performance.

The basic stage of visual management display, it only exhibits or tells information. Level 1 of this stage, gives people information that you want or need them to know. For example, headcount, open positions, visitor schedules, and safety trends. The second level shares standards at the site. Work standards remind the employee of the right way to do the job, but they do not tell what to do if something is out of standard.

The second stage, calls for attention, has levels 3 and 4. In level 3, you start building standards into the workplace. The difference is that now, a signal points out when something is out of standard. At this step, you start using, for example, status boards with metrics posted each hour, heat sensor stickers, gauge labels, and oil level indicators.

Level 3 sets the baseline for the next level where metrics are in real-time, and alarms or strobe lights go off when the actual performance is different than standard. At level 4, the visual warns about abnormalities it speaks to you.

The third stage, organize behavior, is level 5. When something happens, it calls your attention and also guides your behavior. In other words, it prevents defects from happening because you know what to do when you receive the warning.

The ultimate goal of every visual management system, prevent mistakes, is level 6. At this stage, you and your team implement simple, low-cost devices that prevent problems from happening or stops the workflow when defects occur to prevent more. Error-proof devices have shapes, guides, or sensors that prevent the person from inserting them in the wrong direction or shut down the device to avoid injuries.

Many companies never moved from the first stage, and wrongfully think that they have visual controls. To avoid that mistake, start with 5S and keep improving, one step at a time to reach the ultimate goal, mistake-proof controls. In my next publication, I will show you examples of each stage of visual management.

Productivity & Time Management

Is managing your email inbox driving you crazy?

You can manage your emails inbox effectively, use 5S. — Manage your emails effectively

How do you manage your email inbox? Do you know that the average office worker spends 13 hours per week on emails alone? A typical business professional sends and receives 122 emails daily. With those numbers, there is no doubt why you feel like managing your inbox is all you do.

How to manage your email inbox

To avoid going crazy about your emails, apply housekeeping and organization to your inbox.

Like every time you want to use 5S, start sorting out the messages you don’t need. Browse your email on the lookout for promotions and subscriptions. Sometimes you subscribe to a digital newsletter or give away your email address to obtain some information. You are not interested in keeping the subscription anymore but never unsubscribe from it. Go ahead and unsubscribe now, do not touch that email more than once! Do the same thing with promotions that you don’t want to receive anymore. Identify spam emails and put them in the spam folder immediately.

Set in order and clean your inbox

While you browse for emails, make a list of those that you receive periodically and need to keep. Think about customers, suppliers, invoices, and your team. To set in the order, you have to prioritize and categorize your messages. Create categories like my team, finances, insurance, customers, and suppliers. You do not have to go through all your emails, but make sure you include your most frequent contacts.

To shine or clean your inbox, archive or delete emails as you go. Make a routine to read your emails during certain times of the day. Reading emails every five minutes is a productivity killer. For example, I read emails in the morning as part of my routine to create or revise my agenda. Later, before lunchtime, I check again and then before going home. Be open about your process, ensure that your key people know it. This way, if they need your attention, they will text or call.

Standardize how you manage your email inbox

Now is time to standardize your email inbox. Use the contact list you build to create and assign categories to your contacts. With Outlook and Gmail, you can create color-coded categories or filters based on certain criteria. Also, you can assign priorities. For example, invoices have high priority, but digital newspapers are a low priority. Change your email settings, so incoming emails go straight to the appropriate folder or have the right label.

To ensure your inbox is under control, create rules to sustain the tidy state. Daily, as you check your emails, decide what you need to do with the information received. Create tasks or events using the message and then archive or delete. Establish a frequency to revise your emails looking for contacts that need to be categorized or are not relevant anymore.

Your email inbox does not have to drive you crazy. Stop the insanity and 5S your inbox!

Tools

What are Visual Controls?

road traffic safety is an example of visual controls — Road traffic safety is an example of visual controls

The ultimate goal of 5S is to create a visual workplace. Visual controls make problems visible, communicate status, and improve performance. They also guide people to stop or prevent abnormalities.

Road traffic safety and visual controls

A key component of road traffic safety is the group of lane markings, traffic signs, and signals. Think about a street’s intersection. The traffic light and pedestrian crosswalk are visual controls. As a driver, if you are facing a red line, you know that your right of way has ended, and you stop. A pedestrian uses the pedestrian signals to know when it is safe to cross. In the workplace, you can use visual controls to warn when it is time to buy more office paper or to communicate that help is needed.

Visual controls in the work area

Everybody in the work area understands the visual control objectives and knows what to do with the information. They work because when looking at them, everybody understands the same thing and acts the same way.

If you use a chart to show orders completed per hour, you should be able to know if there are delays by looking at it. What you see will tell you if there is a reason to hurry up or just relax and keep your pace. Another example is the red tags used in the Red Tag Campaign as part of 5S. These red labels indicate that something was out of place, and call your attention for action.

Basic rules

If you want to create visual controls remember the following:

Make the team part of the visual control design process.
It must be visible at a distance, choose wisely the font type, color, and size.
Avoid cluttered signs and charts, it has to be easy to understand.
Use color code and fewer words whenever is possible.
Visuals communicate a standard and actual performance.
Ensure that the entire team knows what it is, the objective and rules. Even when they participate in the design process, a meeting or training to share those details is important. This will ensure everybody understands the same thing and reacts the same way to the signals.

In future posts, I will talk more about examples. For now, look around and identify visual controls around. Think about how you can apply this tool in your business. Any ideas?

CI Basics

What is a system?

A system is a set of principles or procedures working together to achieve a defined goal. Continuous improvement or Lean is a business management system designed to create customer value with fewer resources. Each part of the system has a purpose or objective. Many times only one or two lean principles are implemented, but not the system. Perhaps that is the reason why the expected results are not obtained.

The goal of lean or continuous improvement is to provide the customer with the highest quality, at the lowest cost, in a shorter time. The foundation of the system is stability and standardization. The pillars to achieve that goal are delivery time and quality. The heart is involvement, highly flexible, and motivated team members that are always improving.
Each program or principle connects with one of those components. For example, 5S and standardize work are critical for process stability. Continuous flow is one of the activities to achieve shorter delivery times.

How do we take care of the system’s heart? One of the most important principles of lean is respect. It is important to treat our team members as human beings and not a commodity. We show respect by taking the time to develop their skills and helping them to be successful. Create opportunities to learn using lean tools and encourage them to improve their work. Employee participation in improvement activities is a way to increase engagement. It gives them a chance to win achieving success in their efforts to create simple and safer processes.

Little by little, I will continue to share other activities or tools connected with the goal, foundation, pillars, and heart of the Lean System. Continuous improvement is not a supermarket of tools to pick and choose those you like more. You don’t need to use all the tools available, but you have to support all the system components. What makes Lean good is not the effectiveness of individual tools, but the synergy between them to achieve the goal.

Tools

What is a Red Tag Campaign?

I am not talking about the inventory clearance sales, but this red label calls for attention as well. The red tag campaign I refer to is part of the 5S program.

What is the red tag campaign?

During the first step, 5S uses red labels to identify what needs to be removed from the work area. The activity of tagging and removal is called a red tag campaign. Only items with tags are removed from the work area. Therefore those labels prevent needed items from being taken from the workplace.

The red tags contain information that will help further in the 5S steps to identify from where they came and what we can do with them. In general, they contain the date, tagged by, and location. In case of questions, you will know who you can ask.

All items removed from the workplace go to a temporary staging area called the Red tag area. This space should be labeled and the perimeter marked. A critical aspect of the red-tag area is the removal procedure. It includes how long the items can be there, who participate in the decision-making process, and the rules for removal options. Some options for removal are move to the right location, donation, employee sale, trash bin, and recycling.

Red tag zone

You can have a permanent area designated for red-tag items. When people find items in their work area that do not belong, they can translate them there. In this case, the area has to be small to avoid clutter.

Part of the Sustain step is to include rules on how often this parking area has to be empty. 5S is part of their daily routine and they know what to do with non-needed items, and where they go. Organize a special Red Tag Campaign every six months or annually to promote and sustain 5S. A clean and organized work area is an efficient work area!