How to explain 5s: The 5s Game: Excellent way to expain the benefits of 5s

Hi,


in this video you will see in a very simple way, how to explain to anybody who is skeptical about implementing 5s, all the benefits of it. Also it provides a clear example of how quality and efficiency can be improved

Everything I learned about leadership I learned it from Helgi the viking and his lean sensei

This is a story about Helgi, a strong, tall Viking, who was the leader of his village. Helgi had almost all the traits to become a great leader: He had dreams, dreams of conquering new lands, he was respected by his people, he was good at what he did: fighting, going on raids and executing (executing people).

After many successful raids across the European continent, Helgi decided that he wanted to expand his "business" in order to ensure a prosperous rich future for his village, so he decided to have the best consultant available helping him with his new goal of conquering the west. In order to do this, he engaged the services of a Japanese Sensei (Lean consultant), expert in cultural transformations.

The sensei came to visit Helgi and the first thing he did was to listen and try to understand what Helgi was trying to achieve. After some weeks of observing Helgi and his people at the village, the Japanese consultant made the following remarks:

"Helgi, you are doing it all wrong!! You are terrifying your people, they are afraid of you, they are not sharing their best ideas with you and you are creating enemies, if you want to offer a better, more secure future for your people, you have to comply with the following rules:

1- Have Dreams!, dreams you can share with your people so that they are inspired by them, in those dreams they need to see something better for them. And even though your current dreams are big, they do not involve a long term prosperity for your people or the people from other tribes or cultures they interact with. Therefore think in terms of long term prosperity for everybody, your people, other tribes and the environment.

2- Be good at Execution, but not the kind of execution, in which you kill people, be good at the execution of ensuring your dreams are supported by solid plans where you know what needs to happen next, who is going to do what, why things are being done and how things are going to be done. Then you will have to follow  up on that plan and address any deviation so that your dreams can be achieved.

3- in order to build faster boats, produce better weapons, you have to promote a culture of continuous improvement, where people can feel free to point out and bring to light problems and where you can get their ideas to resolve those problems. This in return will bring satisfaction to your people, because they will feel they are contributing, applying their skills and being valued.

4- Respect people: respect their ideas, their individualism, respect the fact that they need development and need to be challenged to be better, respect their environment, listen to them first, before you tell them something.

Respect for people also means that you have to trust them, and trust creates a sense of belonging and satisfaction.

5- Win the heart of your people: know their names, know their significant other's names, know what they like, dislike, what they do when they are not with you, what dreams do they have and above all be kind.

6- You have to know your business, but you Helgi, you already know your business very well, just make sure you use your knowledge wisely, use it to coach your people to find the answers by themselves so that they can grow, use your knowledge to help shape stronger and bigger visions and dreams and above all use the knowledge for the benefits of all, including those you consider your enemies, because if you can turn your enemies into allies then you and your people will be unstoppable in reaching your goals.

With these remarks the sensei returned to Japan and Helgi retreated to reflect about what he has learned, Helgi was able to understand the whole picture and immediately applied himself to implement what he had learned. Helgi went on to reunite his Vikings and become a great man and leader.

PDCA Quote

If the result confirms the hypothesis, then you have made a measurement.
If the result is contrary to the hypothesis, then you made a discovery

- Enrico Fermi

Continuous improvement Quote

"In times of change the
learners will inherit the
earth; while the learned find
themselves beautifully
equipped to deal with a
world that no longer exists"

- Eric Hoffer

Perfection is an ongoing process - Wiston Churchill Quote

To improve is to change,
To be perfect is to change often

    - Wiston Churchill


This quote is excellent to understand that perfection is not static, but rather a continuos process involving change.

Mike Rother Quote on Lean

The ability of your organization to be competitive and survive lies not so much in solutions themselves, but in the capability of the people in your organization to understand a situation and develop solutions.

- Mike Rother

Japanese proverb

Fall down seven times, get up eight.

Respect, support and challenge your partners and suppliers

Humans often look to the animal world for inspiration. Especially exemplary are ants, which organize themselves brilliantly and seemingly never run out of team spirit. This successful species enters into a partnership with other organisms so that both sides profit. For example, ants raise aphids and actively protect them from enemies. In return, the aphids give the ants a sweet nectar. To linger in the ant world: If the aphids were not protected and nurtured, there would be no nectar. Even in an ant colony, the customer-supplier principle applies: all ants have a fixed task, with which they support other ants with different functions. This principle makes the entire colony successful. Now let’s transfer this successful principle to our workplace. We too must build and nurture effective partnerships in order to be successful. For example, Suppliers provide on time delivery of parts, Stamping produces parts for Assembly, Assembly provides the product needed at the plants, etc. In Lean, these partnerships are characterized by mutual respect and support. One-sided, exploitive relationships usually don’t last long. They end up demoralizing one or both sides, which has a negative impact on teamwork, which in turn adversely affects performance and quality.




Are you ensuring parts are deliver on time to your customers (other OU, other plants)?

Are you a team player?

Are you following your standard work? (if not, imagine an ant going against the flow of all other ants)

Lost in the land of firefighting?

Please take a moment to watch this video. Although it is intended for creating awareness about possible traffic accidents, it also teach us a lesson about how easily we can get trapped in the firefighting (work or home) and lose sight of what is really going around us

Getting things Done - Create a routine - Kata

It takes only three months to create a habit, good or bad. Routine builds good habits. Just look at a
successful major league baseball pitcher. In all likelihood, he can tell you his game day routine
down to the minute. He eats his pre-game meal at the same time, arrives at the ballpark at the same
time, and does his stretching exercises and warm-ups at the same time. He has programmed
himself to succeed by using this routine. Imagine a teenager who has a messy room, but who sincerely desires to become neater. If she starts by tidying her room 15 minutes every day, eventually the results will encourage her to do more. Soon, she'll find herself straightening up instinctively. Sometimes, a lack of routine is the only thing that stands in your way. Even something as seemingly mundane as checking e-mail can be turned into a productive routine. Instead of checking your e-mail every 15 minutes, only check it twice a day. Pretty soon that will be a habit, too.

Getting things done - how to motivate people by relaxing

Baseball night. The team is losing by a run; the bases are loaded. Two outs. The third-base coach calls time, meets the batter halfway down the baseline, puts an arm over the batter's shoulder and says quietly, "Just relax up there. Take it easy. Don't squeeze the bat so hard. Don't worry, you'll be fine." The coach knows that acting nervous or pressuring the batter would be counterproductive.
Such behavior could convey anxiety to the batter, who might then fail. The same principle applies to
the workplace. Nervous employees probably will not achieve maximum productivity. But employees who see that their manager is relaxed and patient may well adopt the same attitude. To motivate your team, be positive and calm.

Key Points of the Toyota Way

I thought that could summarize the main point of the Toyota way.

1) Do not stop improvement. At Toyota, this activity is called Kaizen (Continuous improvement). This is the heart of Toyota's success. Achieve mey small improvements and overtime you will have huge improvements.

2) Toyota's success comes also from the application of Lean manufacturing, which in short can be summarized as adding value to your customers by eliminating all waste in your processes.

3) Waste comes from overproduction, delay, unneeded transport, over-processing, too much inventory, unproductive movement, defects and unused employee creativity.

4) Trying to apply the tools that Toyota has implemented and used over the years, do not guarantee success. The success comes understanding and making the tools part of your culture.

These are the basic principles of the Toyota Way:

1- Apply a long term philosophy and grow leaders who live it.
2- Create continuous flow.
3- Avoid overproduction
4- Level the workload
5- Develop the right culture to ensure problems are resolved at the source.
6- Standardize tasks
7- Use visual control
8- Use only tested technology.
9- Develop People (Leaders)
10- Respect your network
11- Observe problems at the source
12- Decide slowly but implement rapidly
13- Practice relentless reflection.

How to influence people - The Influence principles

One of the key skills required during the implementation of lean is the ability to influence others to pursue a common goal. Influence gets hand in hand with leadership and when combined properly they are powerful tools that could change the way things are done.

Here are the principles of influence:

1- Liking: We are more likely to respond favorably to those who sincerely respond positively to us
2- Reciprocity: follow the the golden rule of collaboration and support :" Do unto others as you hope they would do unto you when you need it.
3- Social Proof: We are drawn to be like those who are like us or whom we want to be like.
4- Consistency: We tend to follow our commitments with action and more commitment particularly those that we made publicly
5- Authority: We tend to rely on information from those we recognize as having expert knowledge or greater experience.
6- Scarcity: We tend to want more of something we believe has limited availability

5s is not Cleaning

5s is not cleaning, period.

Consider the following scenario.
You are trying to implement lean and you are giving your first steps by trying to introduce a 5s program or perhaps you have been already implementing 5s for a while and the people in your company keep relating 5s with cleaning.
When you asked them to tell you what is 5s, their answer is :5s is "that cleaning program"....now what, what do you do, how do you explain that 5s is not cleaning??

Here are some tips to do this:
1- start by explaning what the 5s are: Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Stadardize, Sustain. By doing this you should make the point that only during the "Shining" is where some cleaning is involved. The other 4 "s" do not have anything to do with "Cleaning"
2- make very clear that the purpose of 5s as (as well as other lean tools) is to "make problems visible".
3- Performe the 5s simulation called: " The Numbers game". This simulation walks the participant through the 5s process by purposely not using the S of Shining (the one that involves some cleaning). A complete description of the simulation can be found by clicking here:

Lean Leadership means knowing far more than the tools: You need to be a Human Engineer as well

This was a great article I got via email.

"It's a quiet autumn afternoon, the sun is shining. The branches of the trees move gently in a cool breeze against a blue sky made milky with high cloud. The birds are mostly silent at this time of year - the only sound I can hear is a few leaves falling outside my open window.
But, what's that? I can hear a distant sound. Not sure what it is at present but it sounds kind of familiar. It sounds like a low buzzing or humming, slowly getting louder.
As I strain my ears to listen, I work out that what I can hear is voices. Lots of voices.
And they're all chanting the same thing. Can't work out what all the words are but I think I can hear something about "ducks in a row"
Then the penny drops.
You see, I live next door to a Home for the Terminally Bewildered. There are about 75 residents in all. A few retired military officers, one or two former head teachers, a politician or two and one ex-football manager.
But by far the most occupants are Lean Experts. So: what's their story and how do they come to be chanting in the nursing home whilst I'm trying to work?
Firstly, they're all good people. Educated, passionate, knowledgeable and committed (literally, in this case). None of them intended to end up like this. They all set out to do the right thing for some company or government department that wanted to implement lean practices.
Secondly, they all know how lean works. They've been trained very thoroughly in the tools to make processes lean.
That's where the problem starts...
All these people know how to use the technology of lean but none of them has been taught how to implement them in a real, human and diverse organization. They've discovered that knowing the tools is one thing. To make them meaningful to employees and managers is another matter entirely.

Take Mike. He was trained in Lean Implementation at his old company, ModPrint. An experienced Team Leader, he'd been on various training courses and understood all about line balancing, cycle time, throughput, kanbans and all the myriad bits and pieces that make a process lean. He became a real believer. He was so enthusiastic about it that he gave up his job at ModPrint and went freelance.
Soon, he was hired to implement lean in a plastics factory. After a quick tour of the plant he was convinced that there was lots of waste that could be eradicated. (He was right, but that didn't save him). He turned to the Operations Director for the plant and said confidently "I can save you a lot of money and make drastic improvements in your quality." The Ops Director was impressed and hired him.
Two weeks later all the line supervisors were gathered in the factory training room where a laptop hummed gently and a projector shone brightly at the screen. Nobody knew why they were there or what the session was about. Only that they had been told to turn up.
Mike entered the room and explained that they were all going to learn how lean works. He told them that he had made it work at ModPrint and that they could do the same at this plant. As he turned to his laptop, one or two of the Team Leaders looked at each other sceptically. He put up slide one and started to speak. "To understand lean we need to go back to the era of craft and mass production, before the first world war..."
What followed was a mixture of a few group activities and slides – lots and lots of slides. Between slides 89 and 90, the group were given a task that involved making things in a simulated production line with plastic toy bricks. That was fun.
By the time the workshop ended, the delegates felt a bit like people who have eaten too much – happy but stuffed. Mike's parting shot was "Go and make it happen!"
Three weeks later, Mike had sent in his bill for the work he'd done but nothing had happened on the shopfloor. One or two Team Leaders had tried to gather some data on current cycle time but had not had time as it was month end and the Production Manager had been pushing to achieve targets. Another had tried to run a session with his team to define the scope of a Value Steam Map. But his team were short handed that day and besides, the meeting room was booked for a senior management meeting
The Ops Director was very disappointed and refused to pay Mike. Mike tried to force the issue but they ended up having a blazing row. He only ever got a fraction of his money.
That was the beginning of Mike's descent into despair. His confidence drained away. He became more and more nervous in front of clients – worried that he wouldn't be able to deliver what they wanted. His clients – sensing his insecurity – stopped asking for his help. The money stopped coming in, the bills piled up. He became more and more quirkily obsessed by the tools. Eventually, he was apprehended by police standing in the middle of a busy highway shouting at passing motorists "Go to the Gemba!! Go t o the Gemba!!" After his family pleaded with him to get help, he agreed to check himself in for some serious therapy.
And that's how he ended up at the Home for the Terminally Bewildered. They treat the residents very well at this detox center. There's volleyball and tennis. There are attractive gardens in which the residents can walk. There are regular group therapy sessions. Sometimes – as part of the treatment regime – the group will intone mantras in unison. The chanting helps them to stay calm and reminds them of what they've learned through their ordeal. For the politicians it might mean saying in unison "Everyday, in every way, I'm learning what the truth is...." The football manager simply shouts repeatedly, "Publish and be damned!"
But it's the lean experts I can hear through my window, right now: "To change my company top to toe, I must get allmy ducks in a row."

And the moral of the story is....

Training in Lean tools is not enough – experts need to be human engineers as well.
That's the trick that many lean interventions miss. Many training courses will emphasize the technical components that make up lean processing. As if lean is somehow like a newly delivered machine with a set of instructions. Just unpack it, read the manual and a lean culture will just happen.

It isn't like that – as many readers will know. Employees and managers need information, two-way involvement and a true rationale for engaging with lean. Lean isn't a technique; it's a way of thinking and behaving."

What do you do to come up with suggestions?

At times companies trying to implement suggestions programs struggle with the most important part of such programs.....generating suggestions!

What can we do in order to come up with suggestions? if we are the ones going to provide suggestions, here there are some ideas.
Take note of whenever there is something that does not quite feel right
Collect information from the work of other companies, or other departments. It may be available from presentations, books, TV. etc
Study" idea products" by visiting stores such as a do-it-yourself shop.
Study many examples of improvement
First experiment by cutting, pasting, bending, etc. using such alternative materials as paper
Always ask yourself if it is satisfactory the way it is now
Always be attentive to what is happening at the shop floor
Review improvement ideas of small group improvement activities

What can we do in order to encourage people to contribute suggestions?

Provide support as much as possible to meet the goal of ten suggestions per person every month
As we improve the work by involving our people, link ideas generated by suggestions
Provide hints to people so that they can develop the habits, willingness, patience, and confidence within themselves
Avoid criticizing ideas generated
Always observe people's work and contribute advice
Always generate questions, and ask people to think about them.
Always demonstrate practicing improvement by management as well
in order to develop people's interest in making improvement, help execute ideas to show how things can be improved
Encourage people to face reality as opposed to staying at the conceptual level

The 14 key points of the Toyota Way

In the Book the Toyota Way, Jeffery Likers describe the following 14 key point's of the Toyota Management System


1- Do business with a long term philosophy rather than constantly driving short term gains.
2- Grow leaders from inside your organization.
3- Create a “learning organization” that is continuously improving.
4- Drive decisions through consensus.
5- Empower employees to stop production to fix problems.
6- To understand issues, go see them for yourself rather than simply getting reports from others.
7- Respect your suppliers and network of supporters.
8- Create continuous product flow to expose quality problems.
9- Create pull systems to regulate work.
10- Create visual inventory control.
11- Level the work load so groups are equally balanced.
12- Use reliable and stable technology.
13- Employ exceptional people.
14- Standardize processes and tasks.

Please note that from these key points we can identify 6 that relate directly with employee development:


1. Base all operations and activities on fostering the long-term future of the company,
not on achieving short-term profits or immediate stock value. Invest heavily in employees, their careers, their training and their future.

2. Standardize whenever possible. Empower workers to perform as trusted partners so
they continuously perfect all of the company’s production and work processes. This
will increase efficiency and reduce waste.

3. Ensure that all managers and supervisors thoroughly understand their responsibilities
and can capably instruct their subordinates. Being a good teacher is the most important job requirement for individuals in positions of authority.

4. Establish teams of highly trained employees who can work together seamlessly.

5. Understand that suppliers represent a vital link in your production chain. Help your independent contractors develop and train their employees so they can support your overall production mission.

6. Plan and organize everything so that learning and improving are constant processes
for workers, supervisors and executives.

is your company following any of these?

5S Quote

"The less clutter,
the less visual
stress."

The following video shows a great way to explain 5S

The 4 rules of lean thinking

In the article :Decoding the DNA of the Toyota Production System, Steven Spear captures 4 rules that summarize the operating principles of the Toyota Production System. These rules are very powerful at the moment you are faced with challenges trying to improve a process. When you face these type of problems, STOP and reflect on the 4 rules, you will be able to find a solution to your problem.

Rule 1

All work should be highly specified as to CONTENT, SEQUENCE, TIMING and OUTCOME.
can you clearly explain this for elements on your job? if the answer is not, then you have an opportunity for improvement.

Rule 2

Every customer supplier connection must be DIRECT and there must be an unambiguous YES-OR-NO way to send the requests and receive responses
Again the same question applies, can you clearly describe these two elements in your customer-supplier connections? if not, then you have an opportunity for improvement

Rule 3

The pathway for every product and service must be simple and direct

Rule 4

An improvement must be made in accordance with the scientific method, with guidance, and as close as possible to the actual work.

Advantages of 5S

Some peole have recently asked me to provide some specific advantages of a 5s program.

I have said before that the main purpose is to make problems and opportunities for improvement visible, but there are other benefits as well and these are:


•Raises Employee Morale
•Better Safety
•Great "Effort/Impact" relationship
•Establishes baseline for the lean journey
•Better use of time and talent
•Better use of physical resources
•Better understanding of processes and relationships
•Improved communications
•Lowered Stress