07/11/2008 by Andrew Nicholson.

Most companies don’t find it too difficult to implement the first three stages of 5S / workplace organisation, but many find it hard to sustain and improve once the initial energy has dissipated. I recently heard one plant manager joke that his company had achieved 15S - they’d repeated the first 3S’s five times now! So a couple of tips:

Provide awareness training to everyone involved. Emphasise that 5S is not housekeeping - it’s about making everyone’s job easier and more efficient.

Set an example - start with the plant manager or Managing Director. Demonstrate that Top Level Commitment.

Standardise: get the people who work in the area to agree the minimum standard that they can guarantee to sustain. This might be pretty basic to start with - a few years ago the foremen at an engineering client agreed on “no coffee cups on the floor” as a starting point - it took them three months to consistently achieve this standard!

Sustain: agree basic standards (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, etc) for each area. Set up regular weekly or monthly audits. Go for peer audit: Department A audits Department B; Department B audits Department C, etc. Meet reguarly to review the results, root cause problem areas and implement permanent system / process fixes.

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07/11/2008 by Carol Hogg.

The easiest and most effective way we’ve found to engage people:

In the workplace provide a 30-minute introduction to the basics of Lean:

• Continuous improvement:  Plan-Do-Check-Act
• The 5 Steps to Lean
• Value Added and Non-Value-Added
• The 8 Wastes

Ask people to spend a couple of hours over a week or two to come up with examples of the 8 Wastes in the workplace.  Take digital photos, take videos and post them around the place.

Gather people together in their work groups, share the examples and brainstorm some improvement actions.

Have the group prioritise the ideas using a simple “Ease and Effect” grid.

Convert this into an Action Plan, with tasks, names and dates.

Publish it, implement it, update it, revisit it, review it, do it again …

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