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Lean & 5S' in Construction #2 January 2005

January 01, 2005  |  from Quality Support Services -

5S’s in Construction Newsletter #2 January 2005

************** Is it time to ‘Reshine?”

General Dynamics reports that periodically it is a good idea to revisit your 5S’s areas and reshine them. Sometimes, especially if one does not have a good self-discipline system aka audit process, things will drift back to where they were prior to doing the 5S’s.  If this is the case for you, don’t give up or pull out all of your hair (some of us have so little anyway). Start again – do a Reshine Week and start over. Once done, then meet with your leaders and discuss how to prevent waste drifts.

The most common way to maintain the gain of 5S’s is to set-up 5S’s scoring criteria. Then, have someone walk the area and score against these criteria every month.  The score should be yes/no with no partials.  Either it is done or not done, 90% done is not done! Discuss the results with all employees so that everyone can see the good, bad & ugly. Many companies rotate who scores so that employees get the opportunity to learn (re-learn) how to apply the criteria. Graph the scores & post them so they are visible.  Every so often – quarterly or semi annually have management score the area to get a new perspective on your progress and to remind managers what to look for. When the area scores a set level – have a celebration – bring in pizza and make a big deal out of it.  If the area stays at a high level for so many consecutive months then have an annual celebration.  Recognize good performance.

************* What to call this technique?
The most common term is the ‘5S’ or ‘5S’s’ but here are a few other terms that are generally the same tool:

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Filed: Construction-Productivity Lean-Construction