5S for a Service Business

Our organization( 40 repair technicians plus 60 others-- 50,000 pcs per yr)is implmenting 5S. I'm wondering if there's anyone else out there that has done this in a organization whose main function is repair of all forms of computer equpment? I'm particularily interested in work flow stratigies . We repair approx 3000 different kinds/configurations of servers,PC's, laptops laser printers,line printers ,bar code printers ,color lasers,all types of comm gear etc,etc. Our model requires overnight delivery to our clients (( no more than 2 weeks worth of inventory for any product is kept in our finished goods inventory). We experience unpredictable dramatic increases and decreases in demand,therefore the need for 2 weeks of invenetory )). Our current scheme for our work flow design is based upon the technician being our most valuable asset .Therefore work areas are assigned to each technician and they aquire more tools as they gain experience on different products.This leads to a situation where there is little uniformity between work areas. I'd like to know if anyone else has delt with this issue and what was done. Thank You Wayne Overcash
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I echo MGraban's comments - At first I thought "Hey a new perspective" then as I read the article "I was truly disappointed" - lots of statements but no substance and I believe a reason for Lean to fail -Doing the easy / no substance route and setting expectations that will not be delivered unless you fully implement and change the process and tailor the 5S process to support it. JJM
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No where in the article is it being said the 5S is not applicable to services or that it should be implemented in isolation. Readers keen on knowing on how 5S has successfully been implemented in a large multi-locational services company can go through my book: 5S for Service Organizations and Offices - A Lean Look at Improvements (ASQ Press, Milwaukee) http://www.asq.org/quality-press/display-item/index.pl?item=H1271. It is based on a real life implementation and exactly tells you what approach to follow..
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This article was disappointing, as it was full of empty platitudes. Where are the examples (real ones) showing where 5S works? Can you name ONE CEO who has "5S-ed their office?" I'm going to agree with Tripp and others that this is a very tools-based article. I don't see how you can implement 5S in isolation. What problem are you solving by applying 5S to the CEO office? You're going to make his/her office smaller? What's the point? Equally disappointing are the comments that just as blindly say "5S does not work in services." There are far too many cases of hospitals using Lean (including 5S) to save space and reduce turnaround time in laboratories. One lab I worked with in Illinois freed up about 1000 sq ft of space and cut TAT by 50%, sustaining (and improving) that for 3 years. 5S was a part of that, but they did not "implement 5S". A more holistic view is needed. What's not needed are empty platitudes or empty criticism.
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In one word : DISCIPLINE - at least in Germany Gerhard
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In three words, what is 5S all about? Here is my thought: "make problems visible"
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That´s the right question... thanks Soolk
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Dears, We can debate about 5S for years (I love it), but my question to all readers is: can any one give one sentence what is 5S really about? I know answer in three words, and you?
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The buzzwords used to describe improvement is changing over time only to keep the people adapt it generation over generation. Nothing has changed much in its essence. for example, the so called lean methodology can be found in Time and Motion study, which today commonly called as Work study. You can see all micro motion studies and then re arranging the process to avoid possible non value added activities. 5S, SMED, Kaizen etc can be considered as some vehicle to take you thru the improvement. I have not seen a lean or 5S programme explicitly focusing on the most important aspects of the day---Customer Focus and customer need understanding"..all boost on the savings of time, space, etc...the question is "So What"??? . In the process of adatping these new buzz words (concepts, methodologies) like Lean, TPM etc...what is the benefit customer is getting??/ for example, in banking sector, all the current facilities/convenience is primarly attributed to technology change and not on any lean process. ATM, netbanking , credit card etc are the result of conitinous change in technology. I really did not experience any change while visitng any of the banks -be private sector, or public sector, be it belong to older generation, or to new generation--on the process to be followed by a customer... You have to still stand in a Que, you need to fill the forms, you need to wait for your turn, you need to understand the closing times etc.. Any change even if it is there, is obsevered only becuase, the new generation banks wants to show some times that they are customer centric. So 5S in a service organisation, my give some benefit of searching(where is the question of seaching in most of the cases as all are on comuputer based programmes...)office space, look etc, but not much on the service experience by the CUSTOMER... this element is still missing.. That's my view Krishnan
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I still submit that 5S (and other lean tools) is usually pushed into service organizations. If rearranging our work areas are the biggest levers for improvement, the organization has another problem. There is no mention of the biggest lever for improvement . . . customer demand. Our ability to understand the customer purpose of demand, derive measures associated with customer purpose and allow for method and innovation to be liberated. If or when the cleaning of an area is determined to be of value we don't need a tool to tell us. We will know what we need to pull, so leave the tools alone and think instead the results are more outstanding and sustainable. Tripp www.newsystemsthinking.com
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Service environment normally does not emphasize visual control and usually demand financial impact of 5S habit. This is where the deployments face difficulties in getting buy-in.
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I will contest this point from the article writer: "As a matter of fact, when you embark on a 5S deployment, your organization should first have the CEO adopt this tool and apply it to his or her office." My organisation (until 1 month ago, when we were split in two) had 13,000 staff and the CEO is a very long way and remote from most people's experience. Saying the CEO did 5S means nothing. The CEO has probably been on NLP courses and De Bono thinking etc and that is not a recommendation that the whole organisation do it. I would suggest that if CEO means 'leader of natural work unit" whether it be department, branch, work team or whatever, then they should be visibly first off the starting line. But it needs to be someone the staff will realistically see and relate to in their daily work - not someone 33 floors higher up in the building who accesses their office from a private elevator, with a small group of senior executives their only contact.
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Sorry, but this is a strawman argument and incongruent with our experience. 5S in the Office is a different tool from 5S in manufacturing - just named after and using similar principles. Of course you don't standardise things that don't warrant standardising. And who is 'forcing' people to do 5S? Any forced lean is not lean. Push rather than pull. 5S is not a standardisation campaign or a cleanliness campaign. It is a lean tool aimed at supporting the micro level of process improvement. You don't say to a group "everyone must write with a blue pen" - rather, as in lean, you allow the group to come up with ideas that will improve business productivity. When they do, and if writing with a blue pen is the answer, then they will volunteer to do it themselves. Likewise we find that good purchasing/procurement of office supplies is 5S and lean. Don't stuff your cupboards and shelves with consumables. Waste of money, time and effort. Now for some of you talking about office supplies and desks to too low-level, then forget about it and come back to 5S when you discover your lean processes don't work because people are messing around with desks and office equipment they don't need. Then you'll get it. I believe in assessing personal and organisational maturity for Lean and 5S and I suspect some of the 5S push-back comes from people who feel their 'personal' space is threatened when it comes to their own office and desk. I take the different view. We have Lean groups come and visit our workplace and invite comments from them on how to do it better. If they are ideas from manufacturing or logistics, so much the better. I'd love our office to work as well as our local Toyota assembly plant, with everything visual, clean and minimal.
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Wow, loving the tension over 5S. Let's keep 5S, takt time Poke Yoka, etc with manufacturing. We can be better than this a find new tools that fit service problems. So manufacturing toolheads can take their tool kits and standardize somewhere else. Forced standardization in Lean does not allow for absorption of variety of customer demand. If any standardization is warranted, it should be pulled by the worker just as Ohno did with Toyota. A toolkit for fixing a car shouldn't be used to operate on a person. Different problems require different tools and tools can emerge by actually understanding the problem first.
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I'd echo all the points in the article. It was difficult to use 5s in an office environment, it wasn't welcomed ("my space not the team's"), it was treated as a housekeeping exercise to begin with, and the team dynamics, which were already strained, broke open at times despite anticipating the problem. On the other hand, in the end we had released 40% of the available space, created team work flow, designed team spaces around key value streams, increased service delivery space by 15%, aligned the office so that visitors could orient and immediately identify the right people, created space for visual management of the work, and established an agreed set of processes and structures for the virtual team environment. Estimated overall time saving for the team was 7%. Total off-the-job effort was 6 days over 3 months for a team of 16 people. The best benefit though was that the team's morale and team working significantly improved and long-term wounds began to heal.
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Shine is not just about a clean desk - it is a welcoming office environment. Not just about pride in your work, but wanting to show everyone. Are these benefits valued? It might vary from place to place. Sort and set-in-order should be obvious to any lean practitioner, as should standardise and sustain. If people want to see a presentation on our implementation of 5S, contact me. BTW I think a lot of 5S literature needs rewriting for service or office environments. Stuff about finding the root causes of dirt - one of the biggest in our area is people eating at their desks! But it makes more sense in manufacturing, logistics and so on because it could be poorly maintained or defect machines dropping oil or material. There is no simple equivalent in the office and you lose people when talking 5S if it relates entirely to manuifacturing
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Hey i really appreciate the content, I am a lean certified professional and a six sigma black belt, I do agree with some of the points but some are really not working in service environment. For instance when we talk about sort, it could be sorting the files in the system making appropriate folders removing unwanted applications which pulls down the server speed, so on and on... and set/ Straighten is enforcing right tools to be kept in the right place which is quite accessible and clearly demarcated so that an agent will not spend time in searching for the same..Shine in Manufacturing is the efficient way of cleaning but in service almost all the BPO in India are well kept and we have efficient house keeping and it always shine too... i am not aware of BPO's dealing with domestic contracts but at least all the leaders do maintain hygiene at work place. Coming to standardize it is standardizing the methods for all the above mentioned and sustain is keeping the rigor and momentum. I agree with all the other points except shine, which already exists to a higher degree at least in paper less industries. Please add to me and give us novel thoughts which can take 5S to the next level in service.
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Well I have used 5S in a SME environment applying it in supply chain and I would say it is a really powerful yet simple tool. We even used it to standardise our online inventory management and billing systems. Lot of people under estimate it cause of its simplicity what they dont understand is that you dont need complicated solutions to solve complicated problems often a simple one will suffice. venkatasirish@gmail.com
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In fact, I should say, without 5S, you will be pushing it uphill trying to do any Lean change in the office. We always recommend 5S to any of the areas we are working with on process improvement, for example, improving the way staff are paid. If your pay office can't get even the basics right of sort, set in order and standardise, why bother with process time or waste reduction or error proofing? Happy to chat to any skeptics out there.
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Nonsense, we use 5S in a government department, and it works well, it has freed up hours of time and AUD24,000 in value among four people so far. Contact dbb@dhs.vic.gov.au for more details
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Lovely article, but no surprise. Debashis is well known for his book on this subject, published by ASQ. A must read. Also the poem on 5-S by this author at http://www.thareja.com/2007/03/05/5-s-the-house-keeping-tool-in-verse/#more-162
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Unfortunately, 5S and standard work do not work for service industry. As the variety of demand received in service negates the use of these "tools." People keep thinking that manufacturing tools work for service we have found they are a poor fit. Read more at: http://bit.ly/FSanK Tripp www.newsystemsthinking.com
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