Before I dive into this methodology I want to remove the thought that this only applies to industrial industries. When this was first developed, it was developed with the thought of manufacturing companies in mind. So many of the terms will seem this way, but the overall methodology can be applied to ANY industry. I will give examples of this to help with understanding. Much of this is common sense, the problem is that most companies do not do apply the 5S idea. What is 5S? It stands for sort, straighten, scrub, standardize, sustain. The basic philosophy of this is to keep a clean and organized workplace. Companies do not realize the importance and actual impact that a non-cleaned workplace is.
So why is it important to be cleaned and organized? There are the quick answers that I always get; to be safe, or so you don’t lose things. Yes, these are acceptable answers. A dirty place can cause accidents. For example if you leave something on the floor someone can trip and fall. If you do not put something back it could get thrown away on accident. Now outside of the general ideas we need to better understand the concept of lean six sigma. This is a methodology that makes a company more efficient. This can be any process implemented into a company to save time in creating a product. This is where breaking down the five S’ are so important.
Sort: This is basic organization of an area in a workplace. This is where you can remove unneeded items in the area and make sure everything is useful. This includes replacing or removing broken equipment that can no longer be used. This will also give you the chance to find out what may be missing to replace what you need that isn’t even there.
Straighten: For me this is the most important stage as far as getting things where they need to be. The last stage made sure everything in the area was needed. This stage puts things where they need to go and creates a system for organizing it all. Imagine a tool bench. You have screwdrivers, wrenches, and hammers laying everywhere. Last stage you threw away the broken tools. Now that you have the good tools left you need to put them in the right area. Maybe you make a drawer for each type of tools. Another good way is color coding each tool. Put a blue sticker on all hammers and green on the screwdrivers. Then mark a designated area for each color. You can trace a spot for each tool. That gives you a visual spot to place it when done. Not only will this step help you quickly find items, but it also ensures everything gets put back.
Scrub: This step is not really set up to clean the items. This should be done in the sort step. Scrub is the step in which management and employees will set up a schedule to continuously review and clean items going forward. By setting a cleaning routine, this will reduce the chance of breaking equipment as well as save time during actual production (since this step is done outside of normal production hours).
Standardize: This step is more for management. This is to design and set up a quality review of all work stations to ensure the previous steps are continued to be followed. By setting up quality and a general review of making sure this is done, it will help ensure employees understand the importance of it all. This is also the step where management will make charts and reports to track condition of machines or equipment overtime. This is also where you set into place monitoring systems that tracks the results f the changes to see how much of an impact it is making.
Sustain: This is the step where the company as a whole adopts the 5S methodology. It is important to not only maintain the first four steps, but to also improve and expand them. Maybe your company tests this with only one section of its company. After a month or two you find it to be successful and you then move to another section to apply it. This is a good example of expanding and improving on 5S.
Example with computer file management:
So as I said, I want to be able to show you that this can be applied in any field so I am going to pick in my mind an industry far away from a manufacturing line and go with file management. There is a law firm in Miami Florida who did not organize any of their electronic files.
Before 5S: They saved all their files in one folder and when they needed something they manually searched for the file or they would use a search function. The problem was that they named files different things and there was no uniform process behind it. One account would use first name, another account would be last name. They also handled several types of lawsuits which was all saved in the same folder.
Applying 5S: After going in and reviewing their organization we determined that the best approach would be to organize work by applying different folders for each type of service they provide. There was one for divorce, one for bankruptcy and so on. If you click in any of those they will then have the year the claim was started. This help keep general organization. A uniform file name was also designed using last name and date of birth. This allowed a very quick search to find files. On top of this each account folder had a different icon and a different color to help visually differentiate them.
Results from applying 5S: By designing this level of detail we were able to create a file management system that saved over two minutes per search to find files. This may not seem like a large amount but that is two minutes less that a client had to wait to get helped. On average this company pulled around 30 files per day per employee. That is 60 minutes saved (one hour) per day that the employee now gets to do other things. This also reduced the chance of losing files altogether. It was determined that on average 1 out of every forty files saved was titled something that was not searchable and was considered lost where they had to redo paperwork.
As stating in the beginning most of this seems like common sense, but the fact is that some industries are harder to organize and maintain than others. It is key to make sure that when this method is started that it is not a one time thing. It is pointless to spend the time or money on if six months down the line it is not followed. To fully roll something like this out a company should spend 3-6 months to implement and get it all set up. To be the most effective it needs to not be a quick “spring cleaning” but an initiative to get a more efficient process for all levels of the company. On average companies run between 40-60% efficiency. By implementing these simple tools, it can increase efficiency 15-20% on average for process cycle time! If you are not sure how to implement this in your company, it is a good idea to bring in a consulting firm that specializes in this. It is important to make a healthy and accepting workplace environment to it before even attempting to make changes. This sometimes can be the hardest part.
More information about six sigma methodology coming in the future. Please read and review them to see how they can help your business grow.
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