Are you sustaining

The new 5S area looks great! All the S’s are implemented to perfection and now operations at the work center run like a well-oiled machine. This was last month and now the new shelving, although has a pigeonhole for every item; the area is as cluttered as it was prior to the sort and straightening. This scenario seems to get even worse as more and more machines are added to your 5S project.

Typically, a few machines (or production areas) are added each month in order to keep production flowing and spread out the cost of intensive cleanup and organization. 5S is an organizational change not a cleanup process as it is sometimes viewed. Until your organization realizes and undergoes this transformation your 5S’s will continue to deteriorate as you leave one production area behind to start on the next.  

If your company falls into this situation it’s not the machinist or operators fault, its management. Over and over again you must push for change employing fair and consistent encouragement with positive reinforcement and firm criticism when necessary. Only a combination of both will work. Managers know, Mr. nice guy will not work and criticizing consistently will loose all respect.

Just like parenting, managing is a repetitive process.  The best way to make a new process habit is to do it daily. Every day. Like every other company, your 5S project is not the only thing that needs to be reminded upon daily. In addition, information about hot jobs and day-to-day particulars need to be relayed from management down. This sounds like a need for a meeting and it is. Begin your policy of change with a daily kick off meeting that is short and sweet stand up style at the beginning of every shift. Remind employees of the importance of getting involved in sustaining and offer rewards for those who shine. Use this meeting as a moral booster and a getting you head in the game to start work. You can’t loose.

Another suggestion that will work is demoting 5S to 3S for the time being and implementing it over a larger area and empowering operators to this level first before upgrading to 5S.