The Need For Workplace Organization

by Brice Alvord

Workplace organization is paramount to workplace effectiveness and efficiency. It is the process of organizing the workplace so that all the needed items for a particular job or function are readily available and can be found and employed quickly and easily. The motto for workplace organization is "A place for everything and everything in it's place.

Many companies have played with various forms of workplace organization such as 5S, but have not seriously applied the concepts in a sustainable fashion. They became just another “Flavor of the Month”! This typically is the result of lack of real management commitment and a poor understanding of what workplace organization is and the benefits it brings to any company that implements it properly.

Lack of workplace organization is a hindrance to finding anything (wasted time). In addition the accumulation of "stuff" presents a barrier to carrying out the essential tasks of business and also constitutes a safety hazard.

Workplace organization is about eliminating waste, predictability & standardization, as well as visual controls. How are workplaces structured and what implications does it have for people's say over their own work lives. All employees from top management to the janitor must be involved and "walk the talk" to sustain Workplace Organization as a way of doing business.

The concept of changing the workplace was developed by Hiroyuki Hirano and comes from the Japanese concept of 5s – the five pillars of the visual workplace. Basically it is a five step process designed to achieve an orderly work environment. The five steps include:

1. Sort: Determining what is in the workplace and removing those items which are not needed to support the daily work.

2. Set–In–Order: Organizing those things which belong so that they are easy to find and use

3. Shine: Cleaning and inspecting machinery and the workspace to ensure that quality product is produced.

4. Standardize: Making sure that the workplace organization process is applies the same across the organization

5. Sustain: Ensuring the program continues to contribute to the overall operation and the bottom line of the organization.

Workplace organizations must be properly planned and must be derived from strategic initiatives of the organization. Unless you build a sound business case for implementing workplace organization, you are unlikely to the results you desire.

There are a lot of workplace organization (5S) programs available, only a few properly lay the foundation for success through planning and linkage to strategic goals. If you are contemplating the implementation of workplace organization in your organization or if you have done it in the past and are thinking of re-establishing your program, make sure you determine the impact it will have on your organization. A good tool for this is the SWOT Analysis where you look at what it means to your organization in terms of Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities and Threats.

Another way to look at it is in terms of three questions you need to ask:

1. How will this help?

2. How will it NOT help?

3. What other problems will it create?

If you want to improve the productivity of your organization, you must have some form of workplace organization in play in your organization. If you do not have a workplace organization program in place, you will never achieve your potential.

The Impact of 5S on Safety

By Brice Alvord

A Focus on Safety

Every five seconds a worker is injured. Every ten seconds a worker is disabled. Injured workers lose income and employers in the United States spend more than $60 billion annually due to work-related injury and illness. Safety is everyone’s concern. Many workers continue to work despite their injuries. However, while the loss in quality of life they experience is hard to quantify, it is just as real as any of the other losses. Poor safety conditions exist in all plants. They are inherent to the manufacturing industry itself. It is critical that you focus on pre-accident conditions—hazardous conditions that exist before an accident has occurred.


Difficulty of Maintaining Safe Work Flow

For example, workers can slip from water or grease on the floor. They can be injured from moving machine parts that are not properly shielded. They can be burned in fires from oil or chemical leaks, and material waste is often hazardous after processing. Even detergents and chemical cleaners can be toxic. A fast-paced work flow can be difficult to maintain. People can bang their knees, they can fall from high places, or things can fall on them from high places. Mobile equipment can cause accidents of all kinds. In fact, the organization of the work environment itself may have evolved in such a way that makes it difficult for people to operate their equipment, get needed materials, or work without bumping into things. And when people are not properly trained in the use of equipment, they will make mistakes

The Accident Pyramid

Dramatic injuries hold our attention. However, did you know that for every serious accident there are approximately 29 minor accidents and 300 near misses? The workplace isn’t safe just because a serious accident hasn’t occurred—it’s mostly just luck In fact, many situations that we think are trivial are the real causes of accidents. Most of these problems are below ground or are blind spots. The job of the Improving Productivity & Safety program is to help you see and control them, rather than allow them to control you. You can think of these situations as being underground. It is the neglected conditions that underlie near misses and accidents that you want to discover and eliminate

Safety Improvement Principles

Combining 5S and Safety prevents accidents and near misses by controlling unsafe conditions. Six basic principles will help you apply 5S for a safer workplace.

• Principle 1: Be proactive, not reactive, Of course, you should determine and correct the causes of problems when they happen, but more importantly, you should anticipate problems and try to stop them before they occur. You can’t afford to wait.
• Principle 2: Identify blind spots. Remember, causes of safety problems are always there, but often they are in our blind spots. IP&S gives us a way to dig down and ferret out the problems we don’t see.
• Principle 3: Remove the causes of all accidents and near misses. Remove them or the problem will return
• Principle 4: Always involve workers in safety. Workers are closest to the facts—and have the most to lose.
• Principle 5: Use a systematic method, trips companies up every time. A shotgun approach won’t work. If you’re not systematic you will be overwhelmed by the task in front of you.
• Principle 6: Start now! Everyone should begin to make small improvements and continue to do so every day. If this can’t happen, question your strategy; it is probably flawed

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A Safe Environment


People are not robots. They can’t sustain a high level of concentration for long periods. They will always be accident prone. But we can no longer afford even one accident. When we accept this fact, our entire perspective changes. We realize that employees are safe only when their work environment is safe.

5S helps create a safe environment, it also helps in other area of productivity, such as:

• Improving availability of equipment and machines
  
• Ensuring more reliable Delivery
• Allowing greater product diversification
• Reduction of costs
• Improved quality.

While each of the above items are important for improving performance, non will have as big an impact as improved safety. The figure above shows how 5S and Safety work hand in hand.

Performing 5S Audits

by Brice Alvord

The 5S audit is a type of quality audit focused on the 5S program. Basically it is a planned, independent, and documented assessment to determine if 5S requirements are being met. There are five main reasons for a 5S audit:
1. 5S system compliance
2. Procedures are being followed
3. Activities are recorded
4. Effectiveness of the 5S program
5. Opportunities for improvement


Critical Step in 5S Process

The 5S audit is critical to the success of your 5S program. It is often overlooked or considered an unnecessary extra expense. The audit validates the accountability of the 5S target area owners for complying with 5S plans. Without the audit, the program slowly withers away and becomes ineffective. A close look at 5S failures will reveal a lack of or an ineffective auditing program.

Effective 5S Audits are independent, a function of management, done by procedures and guidelines, documented in writing, and informative, not punitive.

5S System Compliance

A 5S audit answers two questions, do you have written documentation (plan) and are you following it. Compliance means that the plan is being followed. An auditor reviews the plan and the records generated by the plan. The records are the evidence that the plan is being followed.

A 5S audit differs from the traditional audit, in that it requires not only verification of compliance to the plan, but also verification that the plan is producing intended results and is effective in fulfilling the strategic requirements of the plan.

Are Procedures Being Followed?

5S plan implementation generates a number of procedures or guidelines. These procedures and guidelines spell out what is required to ensure a sustainable and consistent program

The purpose for establishing procedures and guidelines is to identify and communicate the conditions you want to maintain for each of the 5S activities. When it comes to maintaining 5S conditions, unless everyone knows exactly what they are responsible for doing and when, where, and how to do it, neither Sort, Set In Order, or Shine has any meaning. It is essential that people be given clear guidelines based on their own workplaces and that they follow those procedures and guidelines.


Audits are performed to verify that procedures and guidelines are correctly and consistently followed. A procedure tells who does what, when, and where. A guideline tells how. They may be all in one document or in separate documents

Verifying Procedures and Guidelines

To verify a procedure or guideline is being followed, the auditor must ask these questions:

• Who is supposed to do it?
• What are they supposed to do?
• When are they supposed to do it?
• Where are they supposed to do it?
• How are they supposed to do it?
• How often are they supposed to do it?

Written documentation that does not answer all six of the above questions is incomplete. An auditor should make note of this in the audit report

Activities Are Recorded

The purpose of a 5S audit may also be to ensure there are adequate records that the procedure or guidelines were performed.

Auditors check the records indicated by the procedure or guidelines. The auditor should be able to tell from the records indicated that the procedure was followed. If the auditor cannot tell this from the records, then the records are inadequate. This is known as an audit trail.

All procedures and guidelines produce results when followed. Verifying the existence of these results is evidence of compliance to the procedure or guideline. All records must agree with the results of observations, interviews, walkthroughs, and other direct information-gathering methods.

Effectiveness of the 5S Program

It is important that audits determine the effectiveness of the 5S system and that follow-up activities include verifying the effectiveness of corrective actions. This will force the auditor to examine if the company is making progress toward the goals outlines in the 5S strategic plan. In addition it requires that the auditor verifies corrective actions actually solve the problem for which they were implemented.

Every procedure and guideline should have a stated purpose and scope. When reviewing the documentation, the auditor should ask two questions:

• Does the purpose contribute to quality, cost, and delivery requirements spelled out in the 5S strategic plan?
• Does the scope cover everything necessary to fulfill the purpose?

A good evaluation of the value of a procedure or guideline can tell you if the procedure or guideline is defective or lacking. This will allow the audit to uncover root causes of problems with the 5S implementation.

The auditor should not just focus on the written procedures or guidelines of the 5S system; they should evaluate the target areas to judge the results of those procedures. This will allow the audit to identify problems which may require evaluation for their root cause(s).

Opportunities for Improvement

The 5S auditor must be objective in his/her evaluation; this allows them to find opportunities for improvement. Auditors coming from another target area are less likely to have a biased perspective when judging 5S results.

The auditor must look for ways to improve procedures and discuss them with the responsible managers or supervisors. It is a good idea for the auditor to mention any ideas or recommendations agreed upon in the audit report. This keeps the idea or recommendation from being forgotten or ignored.

Verifying minimal compliance to the 5S program is not the only goal of the audit. It is also to identify the opportunities for improvement. Constant improvement in all aspects of a company’s operation can give that company a significant competitive advantage in their market place.

Audits should not be limited to scheduled, formal evaluations of procedure compliance. Audits should also be done to:

• Help solve a problem
• Verify quality
• Monitor the target area

An audit can identify when a problem first showed up or where to best implement corrective action. There is nothing wrong with doing specialized, unscheduled audits as long as they are included in written procedures for internal auditing and follow appropriate organizational protocols.

SAFETY & 5S Work Hand In Hand

Once you have an effective 5S program in place, where do you go from there? All too often organizations stop with implementation of 5S. We have found that you need to go beyond basic or corrective 5S which is a “fix it” mind-set, to a “solve and prevent it” mind-set. In a 6th S – Safety program, you dig into the causes of accidents, determine the conditions that are at the root of those causes, and determine the best practices to prevent those conditions from reoccurring.

The 6th S – Safety program. is typically accomplished in five different steps.

1. Plan and prepare
2. Form a core team
3. Perform basic 5S
4. Visualize Safety
5. Identify and implement best practices

The way you plan the project will either make it or break it. The most important step is to make sure you have the right people on board—the people who can give you the facts and make effective decisions.

Onceyou have completed basic 5S, it is a good idea to review what you’ve done. Basic 5S should be in place and operating for at least 6 months, Your core implementation team will often be different from the original, basic 5S team. In addition, reviewing your basic 5S results will lay the groundwork for a more focused safety program.

Another critical part of the preparation is to make sure that the purpose and targets of the project are absolutely crystal clear. The team members must understand and accept their mission to improve workplace safety conditions. In addition, you will need to document occurrences of problems and to set improvement targets. The accident pyramid will be a helpful tool for this. The pyramid shows that for every major accident, there are 29 minor accidents and 300 near misses.

Most of the information you need should be readily available because it’s required by law.

Next, you must decide whether each workplace problem belongs in a sort, set in order, shine, standardize, or sustain category.

• Sort problems occur due to items that don’t belong in the area, or due to too many of a needed item.
• Set in order problems occur because needed items are positioned poorly or put away in the wrong place. This includes physical items as well as walkways.
• Shine problems occur due to unclean, dirty, or oily equipment or surfaces—any surfaces.
• Standardization problems occur when no one knows who is responsible for something, when guidelines and rules are lacking, or when a standard is not integrated into the daily work flow and is therefore difficult to follow.
• Sustain problems occur due to poor communication or training, or when someone just refuses to follow a standard.
  
  

After you have identified the problems and sorted them into categories, you need to get down to the root causes of each problem. You can do this by using a technique called the “5 Whys.” The 5 Whys technique requires participants to ask “why” at least five times, or work through five levels of detail. Once it becomes difficult to respond to “why” the root cause has probably been identified.

Keep in mind that the focus should be on the problem and not on the people involved. Sometimes you will need to ask “why” more than five times in order to get to the real cause of your problem.

Once you get to the root cause of a problem, you need to devise methods for preventing reoccurrence. A system of best practices, shared across the organization is the most effective tool to accomplish this. Best practices are typically effective and proven methods. They have already shown that they will improve safety in the workplace.

A combination of recent OSHA guidelines and tested 6th S – Safety program techniques will give you a strong body of best practices to choose from. To begin with, make sure you are in compliance with current OSHA guidelines. You may find instances where you are not—correct them immediately.

Next, continue to work toward total control of safety conditions by using best practices. Remember, the workplace is a dynamic, ever-changing environment. Your problems are always changing.

The following will help to sustain the gains from the 6th S – Safety program:

• Development of new awareness and skills.
• Gaining support from management.
• Providing ongoing, companywide communication.
• Making 6th S – Safety program standards part of daily work.
• Encouraging total employee involvement.
• Use of effective visual controls.
  
  

When people control and manage the work area, it becomes essential that everyone is able to tell the difference between what is correct and what is incorrect at a glance. Visual techniques from your basic 5S program such as lines, labels, signboards, color coding, and lights will make it possible to accomplish this and immediately correct any variance.

Adding the 6th S to your basic 5S program will produce results quickly and will improve the safety awareness of your entire organization.

Building Operational Excellence

Transitioning to a truly World-class organization means breaking old patterns and installing new ones. To accomplish this, an organization requires a whole new set of tools and a framework for applying them.

A Good Operations Excellence framework is based on three basic elements:

1. Strategic Framework: refers to strategic intent of your organization – the kind of business You organization intends to be – and a plan of action
2. Fundamental Structure: refers to how your organization’s internal and external relations are arranged
3. Organizational Strength: refers to your organization’s capabilities, or step-by-step production and support routines mastered by the company, through which it gets work accomplished

Deciding Where You Are At

It is crucial that your company re-examine their reason for existence on a regular basis The business renewal stage should occur every three to five years.

The following are critical for establishing a proper vision for your company:

• Envision the future
• Analyze core capabilities and fundamental obligations
• Revise the vision
• Deploy the vision

The following steps should be taken in order to build an operational excellence strategy:
· Conduct an Organizational Excellence audit
· Review strategic information
· Define strategic benchmarks
· Produce an Organizational Excellence development plan

Building Excellence

There are four phases to the Building Excellence Stage:

1. Focus
2. Standardization
3. Adherence
4. Reflection

These phases help your company assess its direction, learn form its mistakes and build strong competitive strengths for success in the future. Each phase involves processes that help teams prioritize and analyze problems, and then develop, prioritize, and implement improvement ideas to achieve the organization’s strategic goals

Workplace Organization & Visual Control - 5S

Most 5S programs are based on the Japanese concept of 5S as presented by Hiroyuki Hirano in his book 5 Pillars Of The Visual Workplace. The five pillars are:

1. Seri – Organization – Sort
2. Seiton – Orderliness – Set In Order
3. Seiso – Cleanliness – Shine
4. Seiketsu – Standardized Clean up – Standardize
5. Shitsuke – Discipline – Sustain

Sort means that you remove all items from the workplace that are not needed for current production operations. Many workplaces are filled with a clutter of tools, papers, product, broken items, etc. – a hodgepodge of useful items and things kept around without a good reason. This mess makes it hard to put your hands on the things you really need to do your work.

Set In Order means that you find the best way to store items so that you always know where they are and so that you can find them easily

Shine means sweeping floors, wiping off equipment, and generally making sure that everything in the workplace stays clean. This component of the 5S program emphasizes the removal of dirt, grime, debris, and dust from the workplace

Standardize differs from Sort, Set In Order, and Shine, all of which are activities. In contrast, Standardize is the result of continuous maintenance of the first three activities (sometimes known as 3S). Standardize means finding ways to make the 3S activities into a habit.

Sustain is different from that of the first four pillars in the sense that the results are not visible and cannot be measured. Commitment to it exists in people’s hearts and minds and only their behavior shows its presence. Because of this, it cannot be implemented like a technique. However, you can create conditions that encourage the implementation of the Sustain pillar.

5S has been shown time and again to have a positive impact on employee performance and morale. Findout more about this effective tool by searching the internet or selecting some of the links on this blog.

We welcome you to share your ideas about this topic.