Back to Basics – Visual Order

By Al Norval (bio)

This is the third in a series of blogs which get back to the basics of Lean. The purpose of these blogs is to get back to the basic principles of Lean and stop contorting Lean into something it was never meant to be.

What do I mean by Lean?

It’s the engagement of all people in driving continuous improvement through the elimination of waste to improve Customer Value. The result is the world’s most powerful business system.

In the first blog I started right at the beginning with Customer Value. Makes sense since everything we do should add value to Customers. Then I moved onto Employee Engagement. Today, I’d like to talk about Visual Order which many of you may know as 5S. Why is this one of the basics? It’s the very foundation on which almost everything else builds. In my consulting practice, I tell my clients that if you can’t sustain a good 5S program, then how can you possibly think you can sustain anything else.

Let’s examine Standardized Work. Without a good 5S program, there would be no way to sustain or follow the Standardized Work without interruptions and disruptions constantly breaking the cycle. Looking for parts or supplies are just a few of the obvious wastes.

What do I mean by Visual Order or 5S?

It refers to a system of organizing the workplace based on 5 Japanese words all starting with the letter S. I’ll use the English equivalents for simplicity.

Sort – remove anything that doesn’t have an immediate need. This is often called a Red Tag process and doesn’t mean throw things out. For things used in-frequently they could be put into a special storage area. Other items will have uses elsewhere in the organization so a disposition process needs to be developed. Finally some items will be given away or scrapped.

Set in Order – The remaining items are organized with a fixed location that specifies what goes where. This is called a home position so we know where to find every item. These positions are them labelled so everyone can see.

Shine and Inspect – Take everything and clean it to a “like new” condition. While doing this look for potential problems. This Inspect part is often overlooked and is the critical step

Standardize – Develop standards for each of the first 3 steps, including the who, when, where, what and how to do each of them.

Sustain – Lastly, a process of training and audits is put into place to maintain the standards that have been developed

Why do I prefer the name Visual Order rather than 5S?

It’s really a way of visually organizing the workplace to make it easy to see abnormalities. As we’ll learn in the next blog on Visual Management, this is a cornerstone of visual controls. The need for everyone to be able to see the abnormalities so we can take action on them.

Once we have learned the techniques of Visual Order and have learned how to see abnormalities, we need to work on preventing the abnormalities from occurring in the first place. This often overlooked part of the Visual Order system, is critical to developing the thinking and problem solving skills of our team members. These skills once learned, can then be applied to other areas such as an office environment or even a virtual environment such as a computer drive.

As with many things with Lean, we can take the basics deeper and deeper. What once was a simple tool now becomes a critical way of thinking.

Cheers

Al

In case you missed our last few blogs... please feel free to have another look…

Back to Basics – Employee Engagement
Back to Basics – Customer Value
What is Courage & How does it relate to True North?

Lean is a System

By Pascal Dennis (bio)

The eternal verities are just that, and we need to keep returning to them.

Lean methods have such an appealing clarity and intuitiveness that we can easily lose sight of the most important thing:

They’re just tools – methods, drills, routines that are part of a broader system and set of principles.

And that system, which some people call the Toyota Production System (TPS), helps us continually address the most important questions of management:

• What is our Purpose?
• What should be happening?
• What is actually happening?
• How do we get back to a good condition?
• What is our ideal condition?
• What will we do next to get closer to our ideal condition?

These questions are a fractal, of course, and apply at all levels from the front line (Level 1) on up.

And as parts of a system, Lean methods must express the core principles, and connect to:

• Purpose, and
• One another

If a given method, say 5S, does not connect to our over-arching Purpose, by helping to make problems visible, for example, why are we doing it?

And a given method like 5S only makes lasting sense and provides lasting value if it is connected to other methods, which in turn are connected to Purpose.

So 5S is connected to Standardized Work, which is connected to building quality into the process, which is essential if we are to flow our products & services to our customers, which is essential to meeting our Purpose.

You get the idea. Sorry to belabor the point, but losing sight of our core principles and purpose is a clear & present danger, perhaps the biggest one facing the ‘Lean movement’.

If we navigate according to our principles & purpose, we can change the world.

If not, we’ll perhaps deliver some helpful cost savings, and while being relegated to the dusty & damp management tool shed.

Best regards,

Pascal

Back to Basics – Visual Order

By Al Norval

This is the third in a series of blogs which get back to the basics of Lean. The purpose of these blogs is to get back to the basic principles of Lean and stop contorting Lean into something it was never meant to be.

What do I mean by Lean?

It’s the engagement of all people in driving continuous improvement through the elimination of waste to improve Customer Value. The result is the world’s most powerful business system.

In the first blog I started right at the beginning with Customer Value. Makes sense since everything we do should add value to Customers. Then I moved onto Employee Engagement. Today, I’d like to talk about Visual Order which many of you may know as 5S. Why is this one of the basics? It’s the very foundation on which almost everything else builds. In my consulting practice, I tell my clients that if you can’t sustain a good 5S program, then how can you possibly think you can sustain anything else.

Let’s examine Standardized Work. Without a good 5S program, there would be no way to sustain or follow the Standardized Work without interruptions and disruptions constantly breaking the cycle. Looking for parts or supplies are just a few of the obvious wastes.

What do I mean by Visual Order or 5S?

It refers to a system of organizing the workplace based on 5 Japanese words all starting with the letter S. I’ll use the English equivalents for simplicity.

Sort – remove anything that doesn’t have an immediate need. This is often called a Red Tag process and doesn’t mean throw things out. For things used in-frequently they could be put into a special storage area. Other items will have uses elsewhere in the organization so a disposition process needs to be developed. Finally some items will be given away or scrapped.

Set in Order – The remaining items are organized with a fixed location that specifies what goes where. This is called a home position so we know where to find every item. These positions are them labelled so everyone can see.

Shine and Inspect – Take everything and clean it to a “like new” condition. While doing this look for potential problems. This Inspect part is often overlooked and is the critical step

Standardize – Develop standards for each of the first 3 steps, including the who, when, where, what and how to do each of them.

Sustain – Lastly, a process of training and audits is put into place to maintain the standards that have been developed

Why do I prefer the name Visual Order rather than 5S?

It’s really a way of visually organizing the workplace to make it easy to see abnormalities. As we’ll learn in the next blog on Visual Management, this is a cornerstone of visual controls. The need for everyone to be able to see the abnormalities so we can take action on them.

Once we have learned the techniques of Visual Order and have learned how to see abnormalities, we need to work on preventing the abnormalities from occurring in the first place. This often overlooked part of the Visual Order system, is critical to developing the thinking and problem solving skills of our team members. These skills once learned, can then be applied to other areas such as an office environment or even a virtual environment such as a computer drive.

As with many things with Lean, we can take the basics deeper and deeper. What once was a simple tool now becomes a critical way of thinking.

Cheers

Book Review - The Lean Turnaround

By Pascal Dennis

Our respected colleague & sensei, Art Byrne, has just published this fine book.

Famous for turning around Wiremold, Art moved into private equity, where he continues to apply his successful turnaround recipe.

The Lean Turnaround's recipe is "simple"; the way hitting a golf ball is simple.

Our readers will be familiar with it:

• Define value (& waste) and identify your core value streams
• Define & communicate Purpose
• Connect your processes & gradually reduce the obstacles to flow
• Let the customer to pull
• Make problems visible and involve everybody in kaizen
• Keep going - move upstream & downstream of Operations

Lean tools such as standardized work, visual management and 5 S, set-up reduction, kaizen are pulled in as required.

The Lean Turnaround effectively conveys the senior leader's perspective & the work required to turn any company around.

Thanks, Art.

Best,

Pascal
Book Review - The Lean Turnaround

Leadership – Going to Gemba with a Purpose

By Al Norval

It’s interesting to observe Leaders behavior as they begin to get comfortable with Lean and start to change their own behaviors to match the new Lean Mental Models. It’s obvious most are not comfortable, yet I always give Leaders a great deal of credit for trying, after all part of Leadership is modeling the behaviors you want others to use.

I’d like to highlight a couple of these new Lean behaviors - Going to Gemba and Leader as a Teacher.

Going to Gemba has several purposes:

• To see for yourself and understand what is really happening.
• To reinforce the standards of the organization and ask why when deviations occur.
• To show respect for the people

When leaders observe abnormalities they have two choices on how to respond. They can act like dictators and tell people to fix the problem barking out orders or they can ask why? The first does nothing to develop the capabilities of the team and at best leads to compliance behavior but does not lead people to get engaged. By asking why we get people to think and can teach them to problem solve for themselves. We engage their hearts and minds in solving the problems leaders have observed. Over time people will see these problems for themselves and become actively engaged at eliminating root causes.

Sounds simple but how do leaders do this? A terrific way I observed was a leader who was just getting into the routine of a daily Gemba walk through his section of the factory. He observed a group of operators struggling to keep a piece of machinery running. The equipment was dirty, covered in oil and grime. He could have told the team members what he wanted done but instead asked them why were they having trouble getting the machine to run? They replied that it was an old machine. Another question – what was the problem with the old machine?

No one could pinpoint the problem except to say that it hadn’t been maintained in recent years.

At this point the leader started explaining the concepts of 5S and Visual Management and how they were the foundation of TPM (Total Productive Maintenance) and with these techniques equipment could be put into a like new condition once again. Since the factory was noisy he used a set of pocket cards and images to help explain these concepts to the team. The pictures were like a thousand words. The Team Members understood what needed to be done but more importantly they understood why. They began to work on simple ways to improve the performance of the equipment and over time developed daily clean and inspect checklists, visual indicators of performance and found many sources of problems including air and oil leaks, loose fittings and contamination. The equipment started to run better and the maintenance team was freed up to work on the deeper, more complex machine issues.

A good news story all around driven by a leader who understood his role of teaching his people and building their capability so they can engage and solve problems for themselves.

For more information on Pocket cards/ Lean Brain Boosters and Lean Images see www.leansystems.org

Cheers

Everything I Learned About Management...

By Pascal Dennis

My wife Pamela teaches kindergarten -- and Lean fundamentals are a big part of it.

Pam has standardized work for basic stuff like tying shoe laces, washing hands, going to the bathroom.

Her classroom is full of excellent 5 S and Visual Management.

Without it she couldn't manage a class of 20 five year olds, including several kids with special needs.

Kids thrive in Pamela's class because they're relaxed.



The classroom is clean, full of bright colors & well-ordered.

There's a place for everything, and not surprisingly, everything is in its place.

Kids know what to expect, and get help with the most important tasks.

(Kids, she tells me, need structure more than anything, except love.)

STW, visual management, 5 S and the like also helps Pam by freeing her up so she can focus on the kids.

(As opposed to looking for stuff, trying to figure out whether a given class is ahead or behind, or dealing with avoidable crises.)

My dear wife even teaches the scientific method in a way that Lean learners would recognize:

In her Science module she asks, "What do scientists do?"

Answer:

"I make a hypothesis. I observe what actually happens. And then I adjust my hypothesis!"

Why do we continually forget the basics?

Best regards,

Pascal

Thanks!

By Al Norval

A big thank you to all the people who participated in our 5S poll last week. I wanted to share the results with you and here they are:

The poll question was – Which part of 5S is the most difficult to implement?

Sort: 7%
Set in Order: 0
Shine: 0
Standardize: 21%
Sustain: 71%

I interpret this to mean that once people get over the shock of having to remove things no longer needed, setting the remaining items in order and cleaning & inspecting the items that are left is not as big a hurdle. By remove, I don’t necessarily mean throw out. Some items have scrap value and can be sold or can be given away to schools or charities or may have a use elsewhere in the organization.

Typically the first three S’s go together. Quite simply from any work area, we remove things we don’t need, take the remaining items and organize a home position for them answering the question – what goes where and how much. We put the things we use the most often closest to us and the things we use less often farther away. In doing so, clean & inspect the items to ensure they are in good working condition.

This is the easy part. The hard part comes when we need to set standards for who does what and when, standards for what goes where and how much, standards for how clean is clean. To set these standards we need to involve the people who will be doing the work in the setting of the standards to ensure we get their buy in. No one likes standards imposed on them.

My experience would agree with the poll results. The most difficult part of 5S is sustaining it. Even when we have good standards, how do we ensure people follow them over time? To answer this question think about the message we are sending people about how important the standard is, if we don’t check that people are following it? Simple – if we don’t check, it’s not important.

My suggestion is to develop a system of layered checking. Assign someone to check the daily 5S system is being carried out according to the standards. Then assign a supervisor from the organization to check the checker. Next assign a leader to check that the supervisor is checking the checker.

In checking we go hard on the process and easy on the people.

It sounds like a lot of work but layered checking by leadership continues to reinforce the importance of following the standards. Over time the standards become a habit. They become the way we do thing around here and then the checking can be backed off. Not dropped entirely but the frequency can be reduced. In this way, 5S gives us the organizational discipline to implement and follow many standards.

Cheers

Back to Basics

By Al Norval

The dog days of summer have passed, fall is here, the air is crisp and winter is just around the corner. It’s one of my favorite times of year which means it’s football season. As I write this, training camps have broken and the regular season is well under way. It’s mid-season so every team is still in the race.

What do football and Lean have in common? Many things, the most important being how they pay attention to the basics. The basics of football are blocking and tackling. The basics of Lean are making problems visible and problem solving.

Football training camps that began several weeks ago, opened with the basics of blocking & tackling. Why do they start with the basics? In football, the teams have to block and tackle on every play. If they can’t get those right, there is no way they can get the more advanced plays right. The basics of blocking and tackling are a foundation for everything else. They need to be good at the foundational basics so they can build upon them. If not, it’s like building a house of cards and we all know teams like that.

The basics of Lean are found in the foundation of the House of Lean. Like football, Lean needs a solid foundation of Standard & Stable processes to build upon. Lean uses 5S and Visual Management to make waste and problems visible and a simple problem solving process to engage team members in solving problems. The outcome of problem solving often is standards and/ or standardized work by which the improvements are locked in. By solving problems and strengthening the underlying processes, we build a solid foundation upon which to move into JIT and Jidoka.

So, standards and standardized work lock in improvements. Sounds like football again where each play is standardized work and where more advanced options build upon the foundational standard plays.

For more on basics and Lean, see the Lean Manifesto at www.leansystems.org.