Workplace Organization? Is it really necessary?
Lean manufacturing is well known for it use of very simple tools and techniques to achieve great results. One such tool is 5S, which is very simple and easy to implement, it will do wonders for any organization. The 5S’s are Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain. They are implemented in this respective order.
A 5S system can be applied to a manufacturing or an office environment. It is being used by many industries such as Healthcare, Government, Education, etc to eliminate waste in the workplace. Start with a pilot project in a small area of the facility or office and use this as a model to demonstrate its ability to help to organize and improve a work area . A 5S system will quickly reveal the many areas of waste.After you have initiated your system you need to let your employees know about it, which will increase its value and it will continue to effectively spread throughout your business and start to improve the overall appearance of the workplace.
The main focus of any 5S system is the identification and elimination of waste. Waste is created when employees have to stop what they are doing and go to search for items such as equipment, information, people, etc. When employees are searching for items, they are not doing their actual job and this will lead to a reduction in the amount of available productive hours during a typical work day. The mantra for a 5S system must be “A place for everything, and everything in its place.”
Workplace Organisation is a combination of two lean techniques, 5S and Visual Management. Using 5S and Visual management together creates a powerful tool for shifting all processes activities from optional to a required behavior. Turning a process into a required behavior is important because it will create a standard for maintaining a consistent and repeatable process.
A standardized process helps to reduce levels of variation in the way employees perform their job tasks and this will improve product quality. If every business had a choose to implement only one lean tool out of the many that are available, I would definitely suggest that they think about Workplace Organization and focus their efforts on 5S and Visual Management. Take a look at our “10 Steps to become a Lean Enterprise” training program curriculum for Step 3 – Workplace Organization, click here.
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