Beginning in the Toyota plants of the 1960's, lean, or the Toyota Production System as it is also known, became their standardized working practice and a way of producing high quality vehicles delivered exactly when the customer demanded and at lower costs than their competitors. Such were the effects of the “Toyota way,” that organization's around the world, and from many areas of public and private sectors, began imitating their methods. One of the latest sectors to take on board the lean approach to drive improvements and change is healthcare where hospitals and family surgeries are learning the benefits of focusing on adding value with each activity.

Unfortunately many of these businesses, and usually at the suggestion of expensive consultants, begin their “lean journeys” without first laying down a necessary platform for improvement and growth. Jumping ahead to the more challenging and exciting aspects of value-stream mapping and problem solving, they miss the many aspects of lean that are vital in ensuring the long-term sustainability of the change effort and that the changes made will ingrain themselves in the very culture of the organization.

The Kaizen approach to Improvement

At the heart of the Toyota Production Method is the Japanese concept of Kaizen, which is often translated as continual improvement. The word itself is made up of two “kanji,” or Chinese, characters; the first, “Kai,” meaning “an ongoing change” and the second, “Zen,” meaning “for the better.” Hence a deeper understanding of the words meaning would be “continually changing for that which is better.”

Masaaki Imai, founder of the international consultancy practice, The Kaizen Institute, referred to Kaizen as the “the key to Japan's competitive success.” Central to this approach is the reliance on teams to drive operational improvements and change. Within a Kaizen/lean members staff at all levels are positively encouraged to offer improvement suggestions on a regular basis. These changes, if found to be feasible by management, are fully implemented bringing about a greater sense of ownership and a sense of belonging for the individual or department concerned whilst creating an atmosphere of entrepreneurial creativity.

The Japanese are by nature drawn to the group rather than the individual. It is a country that very much likes conformity and finds much reassurance in the security it brings. This is in direct opposition to the western view of individualism, where the preference is for uniqueness and being your own person. Due to these cultural differences, whilst the Japanese concentrated on forming harmonious groups within the organization, we in the western hemisphere looked at ways to stamp our own marks on projects and developed management theories more focused on top down control than horizontal integration.

One technique in the Kaizen toolbox, and the one most often misunderstood in the west, is 5S. The focus of this technique is to remove waste, or unnecessary items of stock and movement, in the workplace and by doing so, make these areas of activity more effective, productive and comfortable in which to work. Unfortunately many companies view this method as a simple tidying up exercise, and as such omit its implementation altogether, missing the full benefit it can offer us in laying down that all important platform for improvement. It is with this last thought in mind that this article will discuss.

The benefits of a 5S Kaizen approach

5S Kaizen integrates the workplace reconfiguration aspects of 5S with the other improvement tools associated with the Kaizen method in a very seamless fashion. 5S stands for 5 Japanese words that can be translated into English as:

1. Sort.
2. Straighten.
3. Shine.
4. Standardize.
5. Sustain.

The 5S method brings us a sequential approach to reorganization that involves all members of the department or area under review. As mentioned above the main focus is to remove waste from our working environments and as such fits seamlessly with the other tools and techniques that have been clustered under the umbrella of the Kaizen method, tools and techniques such as poke-yoke, kanban, hoshin kanri and pull systems.

Research conducted in Hong Kong in 2002 found that implementing a more integrated 5S program, 5S Kaizen, raises quality, efficiency and productivity levels, whilst lowering associated costs. Not only that, but workplace safety and staff morale also improved considerably. Producing clean and airy environments in which to work has also shown to improve concentration levels and lowers the causes of work related stress.

Another study conducted in the UK this year (2007) also agreed with the Hong Kong findings. A number of companies who had implemented 5S Kaizen wrote of the benefits it offered with one respondent in particular writing that, though being very skeptical to begin with, on seeing the results and the improvements made, became a staunch convert. A statement given by many who experience the transformational changes this approach can bring.

In short then 5S Kaizen offers us an integrated approach to Kaizen implementation. Using the 5S model as the basis, 5S Kaizen helps us achieve rapid improvements whilst installing a way of working that will stand the test of time and root itself in our organizational culture.

Implementing 5S Kaizen

Implementing this method follows the same steps as those listed above; Sort, Straighten, Shine, Standardize and Sustain. However besides focusing on only the housekeeping aspects of each stage, 5S Kaizen uses this opportunity to introduce other tools and techniques to improve the quality of the exercise and to enhance the potential benefits it offers.

To begin with, a team containing members of staff at all levels should be drawn up who will essentially lead the program through its five stages. This team should not only contain those members from the area under review but also others from above and below them in the supply chain in order to bring a fresh pair of eyes to the project. We can all get caught up in old ways of working, so much so that we are unable to “see the wood from the trees” - or in our case the waste from the value - and that is why others need to be included in the change to bring a new point of view on matters.

This team will then allocate space for holding "red tagged" items. These items are those whose existence within our immediate environment has been called into question. The name red-tag comes from the color of the ticket, or tag, that was placed upon them so as to make identification instant and highly visible. After such a space has been set aside, then the job of tagging and removing unused, broken and unnecessary equipment begins.

As this stage focuses primarily on removing waste it may be worthwhile to introduce you to the types of waste, or “muda” as it is called in Japan, we should watch out for during our exercise. A name that has become synonymous with waste removal is that of Taiichi Ohno. This man, who worked for Toyota and who is accredited with developing the Toyota Production System, identified seven types of waste. This is by no means a complete list, even Ohno-san acknowledged there were others, and you too may find more as you progress in your understanding of lean and kaizen, but for now this is the list than has gone down in lean history:

• Overproduction.
• Excessive Movement.
• Over processing/handling.
• The waste of waiting.
• Excessive transportation.
• Repairs/rejects.
• Excessive inventory.

After removal, these items are stored for an agreed period of time to determine if they are indeed unnecessary and the level of their usage. Obviously broken equipment is not stored but thrown out immediately and items belonging to others are returned to their rightful owners.

Another tip to keep in mind when sorting the waste is the “one is best rule.” This rule means that all replicated items are to be removed to their correct locations. Hence we leave one set of pens (if different colors are needed), one set of tools and one jotter on which to write. Doing so helps to keep the workplace clean and waste free.

Straightening the Flow

Once the red tagging has been completed, or is about to be finished, the team then moves on to the job of redesigning the workplace. Obviously large machinery will stay put, unless there is a strong reason for it to be moved, but for everything else, desks, chairs, filing cabinets, storage cupboards, etc. can be moved as best suites the environment.

Often, and over many years, items appear and their positions determined as need dictates. If there is a space spare that's were it goes with little thought given to the flow of work and whether the location of the new piece of equipment or furniture will hinder or ease the movement of work units throughout the department. Therefore we find in old established departments, a lot of work moving back and forth, retracing their steps on many occasions and hindering the overall flow of work and hindering the departments efficiency and productivity. Straighten is therefore the re-engineering stage of 5S Kaizen, where the items removed in the previous step cannot be returned until their location has been clearly identified.

Another aspect of Straighten is the re-engineering of processes and the redesigning of job functions to improve quality. Simplifying processes by removing wasteful activities helps overall improvement. Locating needed items within arms length of the operative and implementing the “30 second rule” - every item of equipment or piece of work can be retrieved in just 30 seconds - helps to keep the worker focused on the job at hand by lessening distractions.

The main function of Straighten is to implement improvement at an operational level and any ideas from those doing the work on a day-to-day basis should be sort. One central thought in Kaizen is that the “experts” are those who do the job and are the best qualified to offer suggestions. As Konosuke Matsushita said once, “Many little brains are better than a few big brains.”

Making Quality Shine

However, improving the work area to enhance efficiency is of nothing if the machinery and tools we use are damaged and in need of repair. I'm typing this now on a laptop and whilst I am nothing like my sister, who is a qualified PA, when it comes to words per minute, how less productive would my typing become if my keyboard was always sticking or my computer always crashed? That is the object of Shine, to clean, repair and maintain a spotless environment where every item is keep in optimal working condition and to make sure that it remains so.

More than any other step, it is probably this one that gets 5S the reputation of a cleaning exercise. However when we understand the reason behind the need for cleanliness we realize its relevance to TQM, or more appropriately TPM, (Total Productive Maintenance). By implementing Shine it becomes easier to spot the telltale signs that show us our equipment is in need of attention. Machinery leaking oil can go unnoticed if the floor or the machine is already covered in the stuff.

Over time what might have been a simple maintenance job if caught earlier, now becomes very expensive and may include having to replace the machine altogether. However on a spotlessly clean and shining floor, one drop of oil would be instantly noticeable allowing maintenance teams to remedy the problem immediately; and if the floor is already black - paint the area under these machines another color.

Making it the Standard

Now we should have a clean, orderly and efficient working environment. Whether we work in an office or on the factory floor, we can be pleased and have benefited from the reorganizing and cleaning performed in the previous three exercises. However this is the 5S method not 3S and next we move on to the fourth step - Standardize.

Standardize, as its name suggests, involves keeping sure that the new way of working is the one way of working. In companies that operate shift systems, confusion and thus errors can occur because different people work in different ways. One person likes to keep certain items over here, the next person, over there, and so on. Standardize puts pay to all that and through the use of Standard Operating Procedures (SOP's) ensures that the same procedures are followed in the same way and in the same order by all.

In it For Keeps

Finally we come to the most difficult stage in a 5S Kaizen program and it could be said the one with no end. Sustain is about ingraining the 5S Kaizen way into the very culture of our organization. Unless this happens then often old ways of working resurface, the place becomes gradually more cluttered and we all agree, “This approach just doesn't work in our environment.”

To counter this reoccurring problem, many companies introduce suggestion systems where at any time a member of staff can post an improvement suggestion to their managers with those that prove viable getting implemented and becoming part of the standardized working practice. Suggestion systems are also good for raising staff morale as employers feel their ideas are valued and that they belong and identify more with the company.

Whereas the first three steps, Sort, Straighten and Shine are very much workforce led, and Standardize, the managers, Sustain is very much an executive led stage in that only by their direction can such a program produce long term gains. Unless this is so, we will only receive very superficial and short-lived results for our efforts. Executives must be behind this effort and communicate clearly that others are empowered to follow this way and make the required changes where fit.

Biography

Andrew Scotchmer is a British writer and consultant recently acknowledged as a “renowned lean expert” by the American Society for Quality. His writings on Kaizen, change management and general management theory have been published and enjoyed in several countries including the UK, USA, South Africa and India, appearing in both paper and digital formats. Next year will see the publication of his book 5S Kaizen in 90 Minutes by Management Books 2000 Ltd. Andrew is also a sort after “charismatic and influential speaker” at business events and can be contacted on andrew@completekaizen.co.uk.