This WSJ Article (as do Many Organizations) Misses the Point of 5S

Neatness Counts at Kyocera and at Others in the 5S Club -
WSJ.com

I’m going to violate a rule I have to try not to blog when I’m
frustrated or angry. Here goes…

Today’s front page (argh, front page) article in the WSJ
probably does more to give 5S a bad name than anything I could
imagine. Of course, people don’t read newspapers anymore…. but
articles like this will make laughingstocks of those of use who try
to teach “real 5S” not “LAME 5S”
(or Lean As
Misguidedly Executed). Remember
this from the UK? This article brings us more 5S insanity.

It’s too bad the WSJ couldn’t have bothered to call Jim Womack
on this (instead of calling him for every auto industry article),
because I bet he would have set them straight.

I’ll try to defend the good name of the TPS and Lean practice of
“5S”:

Hey, neat freaks
with nothing better to do…. quit telling me what family photos or
knick-knacks I can have on my desk. You’re a waste of a paycheck,
you people who want to depersonalize the workplace. You suck. “5S
Cop”? Get a real job title, something that adds value to customers
and isn’t just a corporate drain on shareholder
resources.

That’s obviously not what Womack would have said. That’s what I
say. And I’ll stand by it. Maybe the WSJ will start calling me for
interesting quotes.

The article gets off to a decent start, with a stock description
of 5S:

5S is a key concept of the lean manufacturing
techniques that have made makers of everything from cars to candy
bars more efficient. The S’s stand for sort, straighten, shine,
standardize and sustain.

Notice how they said “more efficient.” That’s the key point –
efficiency, not neatness. I wish the WSJ had belabored the point
that 5S is about identifying and eliminating waste, not being neat
freaks for neatness sake. But then they wouldn’t have been able to
document the corporate (and hospital) buffoonery that’s in the rest
of the piece.

The article then starts to talk about the new “corporate
initiative” that starts terrorizing people into having neat
desks:

Kyocera’s version of 5S, which it calls “Perfect 5S,”
not only calls for organization in the workplace, but aesthetic
uniformity. Sweaters can’t hang on the backs of chairs, personal
items can’t be stowed beneath desks and the only decorations
allowed on cabinets are official company plaques or
certificates.

You can’t hang sweaters on the back of chairs? What? Where are
people supposed to put them? A taped off section of drawer labeled
“outerwear”?? Wouldn’t a bigger reduction of waste involve NOT
running the A/C so cold inside that people are forced to wear
sweaters in July?

Not having a personal item on your cabinet is supposed to
“impress visitors.” What? The only impression that it would make on
me is “this is a cold, heartless, impersonal workplace…. I bet
the employees are beaten down and don’t put much effort anymore
into quality… just survival.”

An “expert” (a “leadership expert” — where do they find these
people?) chimes in:

While that may sound authoritarian, it’s not the
initiative that’s important, it’s how managers communicate it, says
Gary Hayes, managing partner at Hayes Brunswick & Partners LLC,
a leadership advisory firm in Bronxville, N.Y. “If managers clearly
explain why they’re doing something, I think most people will
understand the rationale. But if you say, ‘We’re doing this because
14 efficiency experts say it increases productivity,’ then it
becomes kind of Dilbert,” he says, referring to the comic strip of
satirical office humor.

Authoritarian?? You betcha!!! I don’t read much of anything in
the article about explaining “why” desks need to be clear (other
than the spurious “visitors” reason… what if you work in an
office with no visitors?). Of course it’s more than “kind of
Dilbert.” It’s Dilbert, absolutely. And it’s L.A.M.E.

Mr. Brown, the manager of Kyocera’s production
technology center, has tried to inject some humor into the process.
He recently posed for a photo wearing a white T-shirt and flexing
his biceps, Mr. Clean style. The picture will be posted to the
company’s internal Web site along with tips on maintaining a clean
desk.

Mr. Brown is a waste of a paycheck. Sorry if that’s not keeping
with the “respect for people” principle of Lean. It’s probably not
Mr. Brown’s fault. He’s just following orders from corporate. The
insanity must stop somewhere, though.

Mr. Brown targets employees who dare hang seasonal decorations
(it’s worse than the political correctness people who don’t want to
you hang “Christmas” decorations).

Mr. Brown and Kyocera further waste time by focusing on “5S
compliance scores” (oh, yet another distraction from actually
paying attention to serving customers, improving quality, and
making money):

Employees in the main Kyocera office have been pretty
good, achieving a total 5S compliance score of 88.9%. But people in
the wireless-phone division in La Jolla haven’t been as quick to
embrace 5S. That division showed improvement during a separate
audit the prior week, but it scored just 61.1%. “They’re more
loosey-goosey,” Mr. Brown says. “They bring their surfboards to the
office.”

There won’t be much solace when a company goes under and their
corporate obituary reads “but they had really clean desks…..”

In case anyone misses my point — I’m not anti-5S. I used 5S in
manufacturing. I teach it and help implement it in hospital and
healthcare settings. It’s a wonderful tool, but ONLY for the sake
of improving operations.

If tools and supplies are hard to find — let’s say, nurses are
searching around the clinic for one of the few available
thermometers…. the 5S solution would include making sure the
tools are available where needed (in each exam room, which might
involve spending $$$) and that their standard location is
standardized and clearly marked and labeled.

Jon Miller of Gemba Panta Rei disagreed with me on this (and I
respectfully — emphasize respectfully) disagree with him. In
my book, I made the
case that 5S shouldn’t go overboard or be taken to extremes. I made
the point that a heavy printer that sits on a cabinet is not likely
to go missing, get moved, or get lost. So why put tape around it?
My argument is that there’s enough “Real Waste” to be found and
eliminated that putting tape around a printer trivializes 5S and
seems silly because it’s not solving any problem (the printer never
goes missing).

Virginia Mason Medical Center (seen as one of the leaders in
Lean Healthcare) is using 5S… for good and for what might be a
bad application:

After Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle implemented 5S in
2002, doctors, nurses and assistants now share desks grouped in
pods so they can work more closely together and reduce the time
they spend trying to find one another. That means each person is
expected to keep his desk neat because someone on the next shift
will be using it.

That’s great — reduce the time spent trying to find one
another, that’s solving a problem. When people share desks or
workplaces, the idea of keeping things in standard, consistent
locations makes A LOT of sense. But when it’s a single employee
using their own personal desk (as at Kyocera), then it makes less
sense (unless you plan on firing that person and replacing them
with an interchangable cog… no, not a good idea).

But some other VMMC practices make me think:

Employees created new places for everything to
eliminate the need to hunt for things. But doctors and nurses in
Mr. Boze’s pod kept hanging the stethoscope in its old place on a
hook, instead of putting it in the drawer marked “stethoscope.”
“Eventually,” says Mr. Boze, “we had to remove the
hook.”

I could challenge this approach — if a stethoscope is used very
frequently (and it is, which explains why it hangs around most
doctors’ necks — that and for a status symbol identifying them as
docs), then the stethoscope should be EASY to reach. Why dig inside
a drawer? Maybe it should be on a hook where it’s easily
accessible? Of course, that violate some requirement (who gets
blamed for this frequently — the Joint Commission) that says
things have to kept put away because patients might hurt
themselves. Might be, but “removing the hook” seems top-down
authoritarian.

It should be no surprise that your typical non-Lean
command-and-control organization would LOVE 5S because it gives
them another authoritarian thing to beat up employees about. CLEAN
YOUR DESK!! Um, how about you give me an organized workplace and
the tools to allow us to better serve customers? NO CLEAN YOUR DESK
– CLEAN EVERY NIGHT…. CLUTTER — VERBOTEN!!!

We can do better than this. Those of use who have used 5S in
constructive ways need to speak up about how 5S helps employees,
rather than belittle them or antagonize them. Share your stories…
let’s share the real stories of how 5S helps…. what do you
have?

And if you’re Mr. Brown (or someone like Mr. Brown) who is
offended and won’t read the Lean Blog again…. I’m sorry. Go tidy
up your desk.

Updated: There is a
video that actually gives a decent explanation of WHY factories
would use 5S (waste less time looking for parts). There’s one
example in the video of what I think is an error. There’s a hole
punch in a copy room with tape around it. That’s OK, if the hole
punch can be moved. But when they pick up the hole punch, you just
see a tape outline… so what was supposed to be there? All we see
is that something is missing. Instead of putting the label on the
hole punch (who doesn’t know what that is??), put the label on the
table space, showing where it goes. It should be done in the way
that’s shown in the “freeze frame” photo of the video that shows
before you hit play, not the way it was done in the video with a
different item.