5S Leader's Field Guide
We tour a lot of facilities as part of our “dating” process with potential consulting clients. And over time, there’s a scenario that’s caught my attention because it plays out over and over again. It typically happens as soon as we transition from the meeting area to the operations area – regardless of whether it’s a factory or an office.
Our tour guide will be the senior leader or the operations manager and they’ll apologetically confide, “We’ve done 5S, but I’m disappointed with how our folks have sustained it,” They seem to be suggesting that they’ve personally done their part by providing 5S training for everyone and by freeing up several areas for kaizen events. They suggest that the workforce didn’t hold up their end of the bargain.
Those leaders don’t yet realize it, but their lack of success sustaining 5S almost guarantees that they’ll struggle holding on to improvements with practically every other Lean tool, be it Set-Up Reduction, TPM, or whatever. Furthermore, they’ll forever struggle to successfully implement 5S after their false start.
I’m always tempted to ask (but I don’t because it’s the first date), “If you could identify the one single employee who led to the downfall, who would it be?” Obviously, it’s that same senior leader. They didn’t understand all of their responsibilities for successful 5S. They didn’t realize what they were signing up for.
The 5S Leader’s Field Guide was written so that senior leaders, operations managers, CI leaders, and supervisors discover their primary responsibility for establishing a culture in which 5S can flourish. In addition to clear advice on the subtle, but very real, cultural issues, we included practical, how-to recommendations on each of the five components taken from the best practices we’ve encountered.
The result is a reference which readers tell us they consult back to frequently as they lead their organizations to successful and sustained 5S.
To search inside the 5S Leader’s Field Guide click here