The Secret to Sustaining 5S

Sustaining in 5S isn't hard.  But there is a trick to it.

You have to do 2 things well:

1) Make success something the operators can control.

2) Check it daily.

But everyone fails at #1. The night-shift operator takes a tool home. By the time dayshift figures out it's gone, there's nothing to do about it, even with an audit.

Here is the easy way to beat it.

Before you add some tool to a 5S board, set up a shelf that has space to hold spares of everything you'll 5S. In a bucket on that shelf, put about 10 of them. Do this for every tool you're going to 5S.

Then roll out the 5S board.

Now, if you're just starting to 5S, there's a solid chance that tools are scarce in your facility. If that's true, then when you put tools on a 5S board, every employee in the facility believes those tools are the last shiny new tools they'll ever get a shot at. And they're going to try to secure them in their lockers, toolboxes, etc.

Scarcity makes people hoard. Scarcity is actually the issue your system has to destroy.

Make your supply shelf, post your 5S board, and then check it daily. When something is missing, kindly send the operator to get another one because, "you know his job will be easier if he has it," but be clear that you expect him to maintain that board.

He then has to walk all the way to the shelf and back to get a tool. It's a small inconvenience and a very legitimate ask from a leader.

Do it daily.

Punishment won't help your cause. Just express kind expectations but insist it be corrected each day.

After a few days of the operator restocking that board because others (maybe him too) are taking tools, that operator will start making the other crew members re-stock the board because they're creating work for him.

Once hoarding starts to cause work for everyone and there are peer to peer conversations about stopping, it'll stop.

The truth is, those tools are in the way wherever the operators' are hoarding them. They don't want them, they aren't selling them.

There is no black market for 13mm ratchet wrenches.

The funny thing about this is that the workers will pilfer the tools until they trust the system. By the low point of this process, you may have to refill the bin with 10 more of a popular wrench. But once they trust the system, they'll bring all the tools back.

One day, you'll look in that bin you put 20 wrenches in and it'll have 35 - about half of them will look like they're a decade old or more.

Because they're already hoarding, they already have that tool in the cupholders of their trucks or in their lockers, probably multiples of it. And they don't actually want them.

They want a system they can trust.

And once they trust your system, it'll all come back and land on your shelf.

I've done it. It works.