Did you spend more than 30 seconds looking for something – anything – today? What about yesterday? Probably so.
One of the first actions for companies undertaking a Lean journey is initiating 5S, a system for organising office, warehouse and factory work. 5S enhances general productivity, perpetually, by ensuring ‘a place for everything and everything in its place, clean and ready for use every time, forever’. Any time you find yourself spending more than 30 seconds looking for something – a stapler, a hammer, stationery, raw material, a computer file – there is an opportunity for improving 5S.
The sequence for implementing 5S typically starts with Sorting, followed quickly by Setting in order, Shining, Standardising and Sustaining. During the Sorting stage, unnecessary items that have little or no value should be discarded. Necessary items that are required for current work are retained and should be given ‘home positions’ during the Set in order phase. A third category, items that have value but are not needed for current work, are affixed with a 5S Red Tag and physically quarantined in an area that is distant from operations in order to get them out of value-creating office, factory or warehouse workspaces.
Although these three actions might sound straightforward, there are several important considerations when classifying items, and these considerations need to be understood and firmly determined prior to Sorting. What constitutes ‘little or no value,’ for instance? Should a dollar figure ceiling be used? If so, should it be the current market value of the item or the cost of replacement?
Likewise, ‘current work’ needs to be carefully interpreted. If, for instance, an item hasn’t been used for the last three to six months, should it be binned or Red Tagged? If it might be needed within the next three to six months, should it be Red Tagged and quarantined, or given a home position just in case?
The strictness we apply on item values and usage timeframes is ultimately based on how aggressive we will be with implementing 5S. It will, however, also determine the extent of improvement we can expect from implementing 5S; the more unnecessary items we move out of value-creating space, the more often we’ll avoid wasting time rummaging through things we don’t need in order to get to the things we do need.
This applies equally to file storage and retrieval on computer drives or in filing cabinets as it does to factory or warehouse items. Outdated files clogging up space on servers can be just as costly as outdated raw materials taking up shelving space or last-generation machinery monopolising potentially value-creating factory space.
Once we’ve disposed of unnecessary items during the Sorting phase and we’ve designated visual home positions for necessary items during the Setting in order phase, we can expect immediate improvement in overall productivity. It generally won’t be obvious where the productivity improvements came from, because they comprise of 45 seconds here and 2.3 minutes there. But they will be there – sometimes in the form of reduced overtime, sometimes in the form of improved quality due to team members having more time available to verify their work, sometimes in the form of reduced injuries from tripping hazards that have been eliminated. Sometimes it’s all of these and more.
Over time, especially within the first few months of initial Sorting, the quarantined Red Tagged items will typically do one of two things: they will start to become an eyesore that is taking up potentially value-creating space, or (if they weren’t locked up) they will start sneaking back into value-creating space, usually for no good reason. Neither of these situations is desirable, of course. But what to do?
You could offer them free to employees, but that could give rise to significant legal or competitive risks. You could donate them to charity, but most charities don’t need surplus industrial items. You might also try to sell them back to original suppliers or to recyclers, but these are often “pennies on the dollar” solutions in terms of reward vs. cost.
Or you might want to have a go at selling them on the open market. This route will inevitably take time to research auction houses or websites, using your higher-paid staff who you’d much rather have working on value-creating activities. After days or weeks of comparing the various providers’ fees, posting periods, contractual terms and sales limitations, you will emerge with one or two selected avenues for selling those Red Tagged items, some of which have now snuck back into value-creating space whilst you and your staff were distracted figuring out how to sell them. You end up sighing “there’s got to be a better way…”
And now there is. Instead of wasting all that time researching sales methods, what if you could simply walk out to the Red Tag quarantine area, pull out your mobile phone, and in less than 30 seconds start uploading items to the cloud for immediate sale, complete with photos? That’s all it takes with TheRedTagger, a combination iPhone app and website that enable you to quickly upload and manage your posted items, for free, with zero pop-ups, and with immediate notification to other users who are searching for the kinds of items you’ve just posted.
Implementing 5S makes your life easier; TheRedTagger makes 5S a lot easier.