Comments on: 5S

By: V. Balaji

V. Balaji — Sun, 23 Jun 2013 08:45:49 +0000

There is no process which does not involve waste. It starts from your bathroom tap to preparation of sandwich in kitchen to utilization of your living or dining hall for optimum usage. It is your ability as to how you minimise the waste or able to recycle the waste is what the question. There is no hard and fast rule that the must be developed in one particular fashion. You can develop your own system which must ultimately lead to waste elimination or waste reduction.

It requires high degree of planning and executing. It is totally a team work and every individual must feel within the need for such waste reduction.

By: Mike Stone

Mike Stone — Sun, 30 Dec 2007 22:43:18 +0000

I was interested in examining the root-cause analysis document, but it was of insufficient resolution to be legible. Is it possible that a higher-res version might be posted?

By: Daniel Jaramillo

Daniel Jaramillo — Tue, 23 Oct 2007 03:13:40 +0000

I liked so much your blog; please tell me where I can find more information about Kaizen and application examples. I’m from South America and I’m trying to improve those topics at my work and show the examples to my coworkers to create a 5 S culture.

By: Mark Graban

Mark Graban — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 15:41:59 +0000

Toyota is non-union here in the U.S., but I believe they have “company unions” in Japan, which are quite different than what the UAW would be.

Pete is right in pointing out that 5S should be in place to expose problems and to help reduce waste. 5S will fail when it’s seen as management just telling people to be organized or the “neat freaks” come and put tape around everything. A 5S program, done incorrectly, can be wasteful.

5S should support employees. When you organize things so that the most frequently used tools are closest to the employees, that is solving a problem for them. When items aren’t missing anymore because they are always put back in the same place, that’s reducing waste and frustration for the employees. The focus needs to be on the employees, not just looking good for tours and outside visitors.

By: Wally

Wally — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 01:25:42 +0000

Is there a bigger version of that root-cause-analysis doc?

By: Michael

Michael — Fri, 25 Aug 2006 00:35:33 +0000

Pardon my ignorance, but was/is Toyota a union shop? I wonder if perhaps that has something to do with employee self-motivation and a team environment. In Texas it is hard to see that sort of organization (at least in my experience) due to a self-centered work ethic and poor union integration into the mainstream industries.

Perhaps it is due to how self-contained many office-type jobs are, especially in the customer service industry, versus the naturally team-driven manufacturing industry. Or maybe I just work for a company intent on preserving an every-man-for-himself attitude about things. *shrug*