Connect the Lean Dots

I love this photo. This was seen in the genba and can serve as a 5S Learning Lab. It helps us imagine many benefits of practicing lean if we only embrace problems.

How would 5S make this area ready for work? Tools would be easier to retrieve, perhaps even at the point of use. This would free up space on the shelf, perhaps to create a visual kanban system for the rebuilt units.

More space would also give us an opportunity to re- layout the work area, reducing motion, twisting, lifting, walking and stretching.

This type of problem awareness might allow us to see potential problems, like the refrigerator on top of the cabinet. Is this a hard hat area?

Do we need to open the cabinet to know the inside condition? When we talk about "shine", are we thinking about housekeeping, or do we see shine as an action: "cleaning to inspect?" If we remove the doors from the cabinet and made frequent genba walks in this area, do you expect this level of visuality would help us identify and embrace problems more easily?

Assuming we made some 5S improvements in this area, what other Lean benefits could we expect? Would jobs be easier? Faster? Of higher quality? Perhaps. It is also possible that training could be done more easily, thoroughly and of higher quality. This may also lead to safer, easier, faster and higher quality jobs.

There are many small kaizen opportunities here that will help people connect the dots and see the benefits of continuous improvement through the simple act of 5S. Are you helping them see?