If our work environment is disorganized and dirty, it decreases our quality, productivity and the good predisposition of the staff towards the activity that we develop. The 5S technique helps to create habits to establish and maintain the organization, order, standardized cleaning and discipline necessary to achieve a more productive, safe and pleasant work environment, where products and services of higher quality are made. In the current market, the growing demand for quality products and services, at competitive prices, is leading companies to optimize their processes, the 5S is a tool that helps them obtain the necessary conditions to connect the operator with the process, through daily management.
Recently, in a LEAN training session for the operators of a company, I was explaining the methodology of the 5s projecting a photo of an assembly line that, given its perfect state of order and cleanliness, seemed something else and not a factory. As they say, “you could eat on the floor.” One of the participants interrupted to say: “I do not have time to keep my job clean”. I asked him: “Do you think that the photo workers have too much time? Or maybe it’s precisely because of that, because they do not have time to lose, so they keep their position clean and tidy? “
Sometimes we find very saturated physical work spaces, where, for example, equipment, document files, shelves with obsolete or little used material coexist, with a large amount of materials, tools, products in process or raw materials.
The lack of classification, order and cleanliness leads to efficiency losses. Can anyone imagine the team of mechanics that intervenes in the stops of Formula 1 getting those reduced times of change without a perfect order and without a clean workspace?
The methodology of the 5s is a simple technique designed to keep the workplace organized, clean and safe and, as a result, efficient. Its name is due to the letter by which it begins, in Japanese, each one of the 5 disciplines that it contemplates:
SEIRI
(pull apart)
Identify and separate the materials strictly necessary for each operation, and remove from the job those that are not necessary. Those that can be used are classified according to their frequency of use, depending on whether they are daily, weekly or monthly.
SEITON (organize)
Place equipment and materials according to the direction of the workflow, so that they are intuitive and easily locatable. In this way losses are eliminated by movements, searches, waits or transports.
SEISO (cleaning)
Identify and eliminate sources of dirt, and establish methods, materials, frequencies and cleaning levels. Cleaning helps in the prevention of accidents and to create an ergonomic workplace where the person is more comfortable.
SEIKETSU (standardize)
Standardize the actions to keep the workplace clean and tidy, preferably through visual control. Establish visual elements that allow to easily and immediately distinguish a normal situation from an abnormal one, such as the absence or lack of availability of a certain material in the established place, or the presence of an abnormal amount of work, for example, queues of people excessively long.
SHITSUKE (discipline and habit)
Establish rules to maintain and periodically verify the level of order. Provide the teams with the necessary resources so that the organization of the jobs can be maintained.
The Visual Management of a process or of a work post wants that any person can interpret quickly the state in which the work is, or the position, with respect to the planned thing (more loaded areas, more loaded processes, state of the works in progress,…). Visual management involves:
Eliminate what is not needed.
Sort and order: a site for everything and everything on your site.
Clean workplaces with clear and defined cleaning standards.
State visible processes quickly and easily.
Situations outside of the planned quickly identified and managed.
Efficiency and progress also visible quickly.
Safe work environment.
Visual management is achieved with color systems, vertical and horizontal signs, information boards, lights, etc. For example, the Andon systems indicate by means of colored lights the state of the equipment and manufacturing processes. The Andons help professionals by quickly providing them with the information they need to manage the process.
Visual management in a workplace should allow:
Distinguish quickly between what is normal and what is not.
Have signals of levels showing the minimum and / or the maximum of the materials in the work places and in the warehouses.
Have ergonomic shelves for materials and equipment used.
Indicate the storage perimeter intended for tools and materials.
Identify areas of defective material.
Arrange process procedures in the workplace.
The common characteristic of the jobs of the organizations that plan and manage the work in lots, be it a factory or a service company (lots of products, lots of files, lots of projects, …), is the existence of significant amounts of material in the position, sometimes with lack of classification and lack of order and cleanliness.
On the other hand, in a “lean” production environment or the provision of services in an adjusted manner, the materials and tools are identified and the spaces marked to indicate the place set for each thing. The professional has the necessary information to manage their work, should notify the head of your team in case you need help, or have identified critical defects that are beyond their ability to self-control, preventing the product from passing to the next stage of the process and correcting the situation as soon as possible.
A picture is worth a thousand words. Visual Management
We follow our series of articles with a theme that is quite related to the 5S discussed above. This month we will talk about Visual Management, another Lean tool, which helps to work in a standardized way and to simplify the management of processes and the associated information flows.
Visual management or visual management is defined as a system where the information necessary for operational management is distributed among interested persons using, above all, visual formats.
This helps to promote the participation in the improvement of the activities to all the people involved (responsible and operational personnel), giving information that facilitates the decision making and the fast and effective actions, with the objective of solving “anomalies” and stimulating the prevention of problems.
visual management
If we focus on any process or any work we do, the visual management allows us to know at first glance what is really happening and what should be happening, so that any error becomes perfectly visible, detecting the problems in its initial phase. If you can not see your problems, you can not solve them.
Therefore, visual management systems ensure that information reaches the entire world, both managers and operators, in an agile and effective manner, facilitating communication and exchange for best practices. This way any person who enters a work area knows what their processes are, the state of the activities and their progression.
Visual management can be used to communicate and share any information necessary for compliance and improvement of operational standards, such as:
Standards of the work cycles of the activities that occur in the area: visual instructions, color codes / locations, One Point Lesson (OPL) …
Management of machines and installations: boards for scheduled maintenance activities, record of anomalies detected, check list of facilities control …
Improvement activities: mailbox for collecting proposals and suggestions, boards for ideas implemented, areas defined for section meetings.
Process indicators: indicators graphs of objectives, results and differences
In the case of visual management indicators, it is necessary to establish some steps prior to their development:
Decide the type of process that you want to control
Determine who needs this information
Determine the improvements you want to make
Determine the visual control system
The visual management is applicable to any organization and level of the same, whose objective and basic utility is to diagnose and control a process properly, since it helps to communicate better and, therefore, to work with greater efficiency.
In the case of visual management indicators, it is necessary to establish some steps prior to their development:
Decide the type of process that you want to control
Determine who needs this information
Determine the improvements you want to make
Determine the visual control system
The visual management is applicable to any organization and level of the same, whose objective and basic utility is to diagnose and control a process properly, since it helps to communicate better and, therefore, to work with greater efficiency.
In short, what is intended to achieve with visual management ?:
Indicate the worker’s objectives at all times, taking into account the activity carried out in the past and future capacity.
Eliminate the transfer of individualized information involving all persons related to this process.
Detect anomalies in products, services, equipment and processes at a glance.
That the standard is clear and in sight.
React quickly to problems and know what corrective measures to take to solve problems.
What are the benefits of its implementation?
Increase participation and promote teamwork
Improve processes
Deliver more reliable products / services
Maintain a safer workplace
Create a standardized work environment
Improve the transparency, productivity and efficiency of organizations.
I leave you an interesting TED talk by Tom Wujec, information designer, who deals with explaining the relationship between the creation of meaning in our brain from the way we visualize the world and how we can improve this process to solve some problems.