Do you prefer cooking in a well-ordered kitchen, or in a messy one? In which one when you prepare the best dinner ever? I would say probably well-ordered kitchen. Well the same idea applies to manufacturing, and it's called 5S. 5S stands for five Japanese words that start with a letter S and mean Good Housekeeping. 5S originally comes from Japan. Today, you find it spread all over the world, this structured approach to set up and maintain a well ordered and efficient workplace. The key benefits of 5S are: a higher efficiency, a higher quality, and safety. So in total is much less searching, for example, for tools, and less transportation. And it makes deviations immediately visible so that in total it really helps to avoid waste. One additional thing is that it also improves an onboarding process for employees. So you can train people much easier if there was a 5S system in place. In total, 5S is a very structured approach. The 5S stands for: Sort. Sort the needed from the not needed. Remove everything which is not needed to perform the work. The important thing is, check also what is required and has been missing so far, because that's important as well for your workplace. The second S is: Set. Set a place for everything. So that means you need to organize tools and your equipment exactly how you need it. So call is also here- involves the shop floor employees, involve the people. One nice example is the typical thing in manufacturing. It's tool boards. Yeah, it's tool boards, which show exactly the organization of your tools and the order you need them, like the organization, for example, of screwdrivers. The third S is: Shine. Clean for daily work, clean your whole work area and the workplace itself. The fourth one, and this is a really important one in the whole process: It's standardize, develop standards as base for sustainability. Develop process descriptions and capture the status quo pictures for example. Introduce also a checklist which helps later on for step number five. Five means: Sustain. Sustain improvement over time. Ensure that everybody follows a standard. It's the key thing that there are no deviations. So remember, to sustain 5S, there's a cultural change needed. That's why you should involve all shop floor employees from the beginning. If they have the chance to develop the right standard for their environment, you'll have a solid base for sustainability. 5S delivers tangible results. We have seen many cases where labor productivity improved by about 10 percent, delivery by 15 percent, and quality by 20 percent. Safety incidents could be reduced down to zero. And last, but not least, employee morale increased significantly as well. And those are the only tools you have to see 5S as an ongoing improvement process. It needs a high level of involvement on the shop floor but especially from management. You want the management coming down on the shop floor checking also on one hand if there are any deviations, but on the other hand also just to say thanks to the people. So management attention is one of the critical factors to ensure sustainability. Among the 5S's, standardization is one of the most important steps, as I told you before. So let's take a moment for a deeper dive on that S. Whenever people hear standardization, they start to think it's somehow negative. How about you? In manufacturing, it is one of the most important tools to drive productivity. Standard work is an approach which identifies the most reliable and efficient methods and standardize it. The result is a set of work procedures and everybody exactly has to follow them. It establishes a stable and repeatable work process everywhere. This makes deviations immediately visible, like 5S as well, and serves as a basis for further continuous improvements. Whenever you visit a factory, ask for standard worksheets. If they do not exist, you know already that there is room for improvement. If they are available, here are a few hints for the best practice standard worksheets. The first thing is they need to be easy to understand. They need to show what to do and how to do and every operator needs to understand them. The second thing is documentation. Ideally there is a documentation with pictures. The third thing is, there needs to be defined standard times for each of the process steps. Ideally, and this is the fourth thing, those standard times, also split it into value adding and non-value adding activities. They'll be perfect. And last, but not least, there's a need to think- it's the date of the last review. Just check it out. It shouldn't be older than 6 months. If all criteria are met, you know it's a good standard work in place. A key tool to entrust standardization is vision management. Vision management means that current level of performance are visualized on boards on the shop floor and that there is a clear review process in place involving different levels of management. The idea is to see current performance at a glance. In case of deviations, action should be triggered immediately. Based on vision management, the continuous improvement process can be tracked systematically. Recommended structure for such boards is: PDCA. The first one is. Plan. Plan means to have a clear link to company strategy to the objectives, but also for the relevant work area. Do is to have a detailed action plan in place on how to deploy the objective and strategy of the company. That means having a clear product management in place to keep the overview. C is a checkpoint. Typically a set of all relevant KPI's and very often those KPI's follow the PQCDSM. structure. PQCDSM. do you remember? We talked about it. It's pro-activity, quality, cost, delivery, safety, and last but not least, morale. The next is the act part. In the act part you find all the defined actions and the root causes just in case there are any deviations, and this is important. And by the way, what is the part of the PDCA where companies struggle? What do you think? Well you know, it's A. Many are great in planning but struggle when it comes to sustain the performance and to define the right measures immediately. So that's the challenge. Finally I would like to give you three hints for an effective vision management. The first one: it is used, and that's a real "watch out" because sometimes the boards are just used for visitors. The second one: you can see 10 meters away from the board what the current performance status is at a glance. And, the third one: shop floor employees can explain the board and all the KPI's. So whenever you go on the shop floor, ask them if they are able to do that. If yes, perfect.
