We do not have time to run 5S (just now)

If you are in the business of implementing Lean you have surely heard this sentence already. There were times, when I was a novice, when I even nodded to it and tried to work out a compromise. If not this month, how about next month? Or next quarter? Eventually we worked out a time and if pressure from upper management was strong enough, we even managed to have a 5S workshop. The results were rarely if ever sustainable, however.

Today I see this sentence, and similar ones, as symptoms of a much deeper problem. A manager using this excuse shows that he fundamentally misunderstands the concept of 5S and why it is so important to Lean. This misunderstanding goes like this: 5S is a part of Lean which focuses on order and cleanliness. We implement it by running a Big Bang style workshop where production is stopped for a sizeable amount of time, and everybody runs around cleaning every nook and cranny of the area. Once done, management establishes an audit schedule and the area will be stringently audited by the area manager or higher, on a regular basis. Deficiencies found will be addressed and eliminated on the shortest notice.

Can you spot the problem with this? There is no issue with the starting Big Bang if the company can permit it. It can be a mind-blowing experience to have everyone work together outside hierarchies, for a common goal, achieving some immediate and highly satisfactory successes. Even in the most resistant plant I have been at I heard remarks like "well, one has to admit that there is something in this idea of coming in and working together".

The problem is with the follow-up. Most plants are familiar with customer audits, and they are a pain and a waste of time. Not to mention, that, from a Toyota Kata POV they are a repeated training of all the workforce to present a nicer than real picture of themselves. This squarely contradicts our basic mindset of uncompromisingly showing problems so that they can be dealt with before they grow to a crisis.

So, the manager saying "we have no time for 5S" is basically saying something like - "I do not want to waste the time of my team members to prepare and go through 5S audits with the boss and to be forced to scramble to fix things afterwards. Running our processes is way more important than the formality of these externally imposed audits."

This is a straw-man argument if 5S is done correctly. Of course, first we must understand WHY 5S is important for a Lean implementation. And, no, it is not because unordered and dirty workplaces are inefficient. They are, but this in itself would not make 5S be at the fundament of the House of Lean. The reason, as I understand it now, is that 5S is a first exercise in working with standards.  Many implementations focus on the first 3 S-es with the argument ,. we will implement the last 2 when we will have time” , and this is the error I am talking about.

If we implement 5S in a way that it will become the fundament of our Lean organization, we must start thinking about standards. 5S is an exercise where each team defines their own cleanliness standard, the way they want to live at the workplace. This standard will be discussed and approved and once accepted, openly displayed. It is a contract between area management and the team about how they want their work environment to be.

Once a standard is defined and visible, whether 5S or anything else, we need to build the mechanism to check whether this standard is respected. This is not a relatively rare occurrence as in a 5S audit by the boss once a month, it must become the way people spend their days at work. Because the standard is openly displayed anybody can see at any time whether it is respected or not. Imagine a work-desk for quality test, for example. It is a lot harder to leave two empty Cola bottles on the desk if there is a large picture showing the desk WITHOUT junk on it, than otherwise. And , as we talk about Kata's all the time, it is much more easy to develop a reflex of checking the desk and immediately removing the junk if the standard is displayed, then if it isn't.

Of course, this must be reinforced by the team leaders and management for a while, until it becomes automatic. But we do not have "audits" anymore, with a time - consuming audit preparation where everybody fakes a clean environment for the duration of the audit and falls back to business as usual once thje auditor is away. Instead, we have a way of life where everybody , team members, shift-leaders, managers have a Kata of looking at the standard , comparing it to reality and calling attention to any deviation.

How much time does this check take? Less than a minute, but it may happen 5 times a day, until it becomes a reflex for all at the workplace to immediately address these small deviations. And this is what we want to achieve. If people learn to define work standards and maintain them as a matter of course we shall be a long way into achieving a true Lean transformation. This is why 5S is important - why would we expect that an organization respects their standards in some areas when it "does not have the time" even to define, much less to respect standards in such an elementary area as a clean and orderly workplace?

Masaaki Imai tells the story of a team visiting a plant that they want to contract as a supplier. Instead of going to the meeting room to watch a nice presentation about the plant, in full comfort, they ask 10 minutes to go around the production before the presentation begins. After the Gemba they politely take their leave, saying that they do not believe the plant would be suitable as a supplier. How did they know? How could they be so sure?  I believe the answer lies in 5S. It is not a problem that the plant did not implement a full Lean program, but rather,  their relationship to the last 2 S-es, respecting their own standards. If they don't have any or worse, they do have some but do not respect them how could a client trust them that their requirements will be respected?

So, this is why , today, I have red warning lights blinking in my mind’s eye when I hear that "we have no time for 5S just now".

Sandor Bende-Farkas

Principal, Executive Committee Member

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