Category Archives: Waste
What is 5S?
5S is a process to achieve a safe, efficient and organized workplace. It allows people to see if things are abnormal quickly, so they can address the issue. It does not keep people from doing something. 5S just allows someone to see if something isn’t right quickly.
The Five S’s are:
- Sort – Decide what is needed and what is not needed. Get rid of the things not needed.
- Straighten – Understand how things are used and put them in an appropriate place for the work space.
- Shine – Clean and label the area.
- Standardize – The work you have done is the new standard and needs to be kept that way.
- Sustain – The hardest part is not to let the work space degrade. Put checks in place to keep the standards in place.
Quite often 5S is equated with being lean. A large number of people believe that 5S is foundational to being lean. The thought is 5S is the first thing an organization must do to be lean. That is not necessarily the case.
Something as simple as organizing the workplace can help improve the efficiency of many things you do. I have seen 5S help gain large improvements with quick changeovers of machines. Looking for tools always seems to be the biggest waste when breaking down a setup of a machine, so having the tools in a particular spot every time can help a lot.
5S is not just for the manufacturing floor. It can benefit any work space, including in the office. But you do have to be careful. When it comes to 5S in the office many people get carried away. They prescribe marking where the computer should be and taping an outline around the stapler at everyone’s desk. This isn’t the purpose of 5S, so be sure to do 5S correctly in the office in environment.
Think of a NASCAR garage when doing 5S. It is spotless. The reason, so any drip from the car can be seen immediately and the problem can be addressed. You can’t go too far with organizing your work place.
5S is hard work. The hardest part is sustaining the work of the first 4S’s. Sustaining the work takes discipline. If the discipline is maintained the rewards of 5S can be great.
Good luck on your path to success with 5S.
Guest Post: Eliminating TIMWOOD
Today’s post is from Tony Ferraro, on behalf of Creative Safety Supply based in Portland, OR (www.creativesafetysupply.com). Tony strives to provide helpful information to create safer and more efficient industrial work environments. His knowledge base focuses primarily on practices such as 5S, Six Sigma, Kaizen, and the Lean mindset. Tony believes in being proactive and that for positive change to happen, we must be willing to be transparent and actively seek out areas in need of improvement. An organized, safe, and well-planned work space leads to increased productivity, quality products and happier employees.
Unfortunately, waste is something that is all around us. However, even though waste is common it does not make it any more acceptable. When businesses implement lean tactics in order to enhance productivity and efficiency, the elimination of waste is usually one of the biggest challenges, yet offers the highest rewards when done effectively. The elimination of TIMWOOD can help save your business time and money, while also helping to add value and increase customer satisfaction. When we mention eliminating TIMWOOD, we are not talking about eliminating a particular employee or person. Instead, the mnemonic TIMWOOD refers to the elimination of seven different wastes. When it comes to productivity, the sad truth is that only about 5% of employee work time each day is spent on value added tasks that actually benefit the customer. However, knowing that statistic, it leaves many of us wondering “What are employees doing with the other 95% of daily work time?” Some may insist the rest of the time is spent on waste or tasks that essentially add no value to customer satisfaction. In order to combat unwanted losses in productivity and waste, we must first identify and understand TIMWOOD and how the elimination of the seven wastes can make a difference.
What Does TIMWOOD Stand For?
Many people choose to use mnemonics in order to help them quickly and easily identify multiple items. The mnemonic TIMWOOD is also used for that purpose. Let’s take a look at each letter and how it contributes towards the elimination of waste.
- T- Transport: Even though product transportation is virtually unavoidable, the time and distance are both controlled variables. Many times products are moved multiple times before reaching their final destinations. However, each time a product is moved it runs the risk of being lost or damaged which in turn eliminates value.
- I – Inventory: When working towards lean, it is important to avoid an abundance unused and unsold inventory that just sits around on shelves or in storage. Whether the inventory is of parts, partially finished products, or finished items, the more inventory there is, the higher the loss in value since funds are tied up in unsold goods.
- M – Movement: This waste is similar to transportation waste, but instead of focusing on the loss of value with products in transport, this waste focuses on transportation or movement equipment. When trucks, hauling vehicles, and other movement devices are used for unnecessary long amounts of time and for unneeded tasks the value goes down while the opportunity for damage increases.
- W – Waiting and Delays: When products are sitting in limbo, somewhere between the start and finish of production they are not adding value to the business and are thus creating waste.
- O – Overproduction: The waste of overproduction has been considered one of the worst wastes. Money is wasted because businesses must pay employees to manufacture the parts, find places to store them, inventory them, etc. All of these are redundant costs that could be avoided.
- O – Over Processing: Over Processing basically means to do more to a product than technically needed, and if a product is not 100% perfect it is rejected and therefore wasted. Even though businesses aim to provide customers with high quality products that operate as intended, small imperfections that would not impede function, use, or aesthetics should not be automatically disposed of and reworked.
- D – Defects: Defects do not add value. When products are created with a defect that hampers the function they must be reworked and remanufactured. This causes a waste in production, materials, and other resources such as electricity and machine wear and tear.
Waste is Avoidable!
With the right amount of dedication and drive, anyone can succeed with the elimination of waste. However, the first step is to identify the areas of waste so tactics can be implemented to revamp processes and practices to help reduce waste and start improving productivity. The best part is that any business can benefit from waste removal; TIMWOOD is not geared only towards industrial or manufacturing businesses as it can also be effectively implemented in nearly any work environment.
My Kids’ School Eliminates Waste in Cafeteria
It’s that time of year again when I spend a day working at my kids’ school. It is always a lot of fun to be with the kids in their classrooms and help with activities. Every year I learn something new from a visual management perspective or from some other aspect of lean. The school is not “using lean” but there are always elements of it around.
This year I noticed some small improvements that were great ways to element small amounts of waste that would add up over time. One example was the placement of the silverware in the lunch line. It used to be the first thing in the line so every kid would grab one of each piece of silverware before choosing their lunch and knowing what they would actually need for their lunch. Now the silverware is the very last thing in the lunch line. The kids can choose their food and then pick the appropriate utensils. This eliminates the cleaning silverware that was never used, saving time in putting silverware away as well as possibly reducing the number of dishwasher cycles needed to clean the dishes.
A second small improvement I saw had to do with reducing food waste. As part of the lunch, students get milk in cartons, yogurt cups or other food items that are packaged. In years past, if the student didn’t want it they threw it in the trash. At the same time, other students might want an extra milk or yogurt and would have to pay extra for it.
Now the school has the “share table”. It is a small table where students that don’t want their milk carton or packaged food item can put it on the table for other students to eat. If another student wants an extra milk they can ask to go to the “share table” and pick an item. Less food in the trash and less cost to parents of kids who want a little extra. What a great idea!
It is amazing at all the learning that I still get every year I go into my kids’ school. We can learn ways to reduce waste and communicate visually anywhere. We just have to keep our eyes and minds open.
Veteran’s Affairs (VA) Designed to Add Waste
Sometimes you just wonder if people design processes in order to create waste. Like it is a hobby and creating all the waste is just fun for them.
People I am close with recently had a death in the family. He was a veteran with illnesses from handling Agent Orange in Vietnam. He passed at the VA hospital.
The family believes the unexpected complications that lead to his passing are related to his illness from handling the Agent Orange. The VA hospital asked the family if they would like to request an investigation and the family did.
After close to 6 months, the family receives a letter stating the investigation is complete. If the family would like to see the results they need to submit a request for the results. Really?! How many people do you know that request an investigation into anything and don’t want to know the results? So the VA wants to create more paperwork and processing to send something the family requested months earlier. Again, the family originally requested it. Why wouldn’t the VA just send the results?
As ridiculous as that sounds, that isn’t the biggest waste of this ordeal. A week later the family receives a letter stating they will receive the results via the mail within 2 weeks. What?! Why wouldn’t the VA just send the results? They have already set the expectation that it won’t happen quickly because the investigation didn’t.
Someone has a job that is sending letters saying the information is being sent.
I don’t know where to even begin with this. The family has been through enough. The VA should be making things easy on the family and not more frustrating.
Quick simple solution. When the family requests an investigation have the results sent directly to them after the results have been finalized. No requests for sending the results. No letter saying the results are in the mail. Just send it.
When you hear of something like this, you really have to wonder if anyone is paying attention to this process and how it got designed so poorly.
The Answer is Easy…Better Forecasting
Image courtesy of Danilo Rizzuti / FreeDigitalPhotos.net
Have you ever sat in a meeting where the discussion is about the high (sometimes low) inventory levels? Do you frequently hear the answer of, “Once we get our better forecasting tool in place our inventories will be better.”?
This is a strong sign the company has not fully embraced lean thinking.
A lean company would not even have a discussion where forecasting tools are the solution. A lean company is closely connected to their customers. The goal is to make one product when one product is bought by the customer. I know this isn’t easy for all companies, but the discussion would be around how to move in this direction. Not how a better forecast can be generated.
There is one thing I can guarantee about a forecast. It is WRONG!
I have never heard anyone say, “Man, I nailed that forecast! I hit it right on the nose!”
Don’t misunderstand me. I do believe there is a use in looking forward and understand what is coming. A company would like to understand if a peak or a valley of the product sales might be coming. This can help set and adjust maximum kanban levels for that period of time.
A forecast is good to understand directionally where volumes are heading. Forecasting is not a good basis for your entire inventory strategy.
It is a difficult mindset to change. When you do and act on that new mindset, the dividends it pays are enormous.
Visual Management at Home
I received this picture from a guy I worked with and coached for a couple of years. I am sharing this with his permission
(click on image to enlarge)
He and his wife would go to the store and if there was a sale, they would buy meat. They never knew what they had at home. When they got home from a recent trip they had bought meat they had plenty of…again. So my friend decided to get visual. He sorted out the meat that had gone bad and then created this visual board to better understand when he needed to buy a particular type of meat. He likes to barbeque so he keeps a variety of meat on hand.
The board is simple. Conveys one type of information. And anyone can understand it by looking at it.
What visual management have you used at home?
Waiting is Less Expensive
“Paying people to produce excess product cost more than paying people to do nothing.”
-Jean Cunningham
This is a quote I like to use when trying to change people’s mindsets around the 7 wastes. It is human nature for people to want to look busy or “do something” when they are at work. Especially, in today because our minds start to think, “If I’m not doing anything, they will think I’m not needed and cut my job.” The managers and supervisors feed this mindset by pushing people to produce more and “keep the machines running” in a manufacturing world.
We need to switch this mindset and let it be known it is alright to be doing nothing if there is nothing to produce.
Overproduction (producing more than is needed or producing too early) is the waste that can create the other 6 wastes which in turn adds product costs.
It may be hard to see someone standing and waiting, but if a person is waiting and not working when there is no production needed they are not adding any more cost to the product. They aren’t building up inventory of components that may not be used or later are found to be defective or become defective from sitting around waiting to be used.
Also, when a person is standing around waiting it highlights the imbalance in the work flow and can lead to problem solving around creating a better flow further reducing costs.
We should try to eliminate the waste of waiting, but we should do it the right way. By highlighting the imbalance in the work and then create a better process that eliminates the waiting time.
In the end, waiting is less expensive then over producing product you don’t need.
Understanding Single Piece Flow
One of the first concepts that pops up when learning about lean is single piece flow. This is a great concept and should be considered when it is appropriate. Cooking my french fries might not be the time to use single piece flow, but downloading songs may be.
My wife runs a small business of her own. She sells products online through her website and Etsy as well as events in our local area. Selling online and brick-n-mortar poses problems from time to time. One issue is wanting to provide a wide range of scents for customers, but not having large amounts of inventory on-hand because of the batch process of making the soaps in loaves.
After a year and a half, we think we find a solution to this issue. Most of her requests for custom scents come through her online sales. Typically, she has the fragrance available but can’t justify making 8 bars in a batch because the other 7 may sit for a year or longer. She has found a mold that works very well and is the size she needs that allows her to make one soap at a time. My wife can now fulfill the requests of her customers and offer more fragrances to her line in her online shop without the expense of carrying a year’s worth of finished product.
What about the live events to sell the inventory?
Good question. The events are always in the Sept – Dec time frame. So, if a customer orders a special scent in January, the rest of the finished goods would sit until September at the earliest. She could have used the raw materials for other products. The soaps that are high volume sellers and do well at the live events can be made in batches right before the event. Any finished product that is leftover after the event season can be sold online.
It is a good mix of using single piece flow and batch processing when it best fits the situation. It is about understanding your business needs and trying to meet those needs. Not forcing everything to one solution whether if fits or not.
What makes sense for your business?
Counting Down the Top 10 Viewed Posts of 2012 – 5 Thru 1
2013 is now in full swing. Before 2012 is too far in the rear view mirror, I thought I would recap the Top 10 most viewed posts on Beyond Lean for 2012.
New followers of the blog can use this as an opportunity to read posts they might have not seen in the past. While, long time followers can use this as an opportunity to re-read some of the top viewed posts.
This post will count down the 10th thru 6th most viewed posts of 2012. Enjoy!
5. Sportscenter Has Killed U.S. Manufacturing (June 2012) – Previous Year Ranked #3 – Manufacturing is fundamental. The U.S. has lost it’s sights on the fundamentals and is just worried about the flashy. The U.s. needs to get back to the fundamentals in order to get back on top.
4. Need the Mental Toughness of a Navy SEAL (February 2012) – Inspiration of a Navy SEAL got me thinking about the mental toughness it takes to create change.
3. 5S in the Office (September 2010) – Previous Year Ranked #1 – Most viewed post for two straight years now. A look at using 5S in the office. What is going too far and how to use 5S in the office properly.
2. Keys to Sustaining 5S (September 2011) – Tips to help sustain (the 5th ‘S’) the gains made from implementing 5S.
AND……
1. Why Are Lean People Seen As Lean People? (February 2011) – Previous Year Ranked #2 – Exploring the question as to why lean people are not seen as more than just lean experts. Looking at a process from end-to-end seems like a good business practice no matter what the role.
I look forward to more posts in 2013!
Counting Down the Top 10 Viewed Posts of 2012 – 10 Thru 6
2013 is now in full swing. Before 2012 is too far in the rear view mirror, I thought I would recap the Top 10 most viewed posts on Beyond Lean for 2012.
New followers of the blog can use this as an opportunity to read posts they might have not seen in the past. While, long time followers can use this as an opportunity to re-read some of the top viewed posts.
This post will count down the 10th thru 6th most viewed posts of 2012. Enjoy!
10. Guest Post: Selling Lean to People That Don’t Want It (July 2011) – This is a post from Joe Wilson before he became a full-time author at Beyond Lean. Joe talks about ways to sell lean to people who are not bought into the benefits of lean.
9. Making Leader Standard Work Visual (June 2011) – Previous Year Ranked #8 – An example of a visual board from a group I worked with. The board makes the tasks and if they were completed by the managers visual.
8. Dilbert Leading Transformation (July 2010) – Previous Year Ranked #10 – The Pointy-Haired Boss wants clear responsibilities and employee engagement.
7. True Mentoring (May 2012) – This is my take on true mentoring versus fake mentoring that goes on in business today.
6. Comparing Lean Principles to the 14 Toyota Principles (July 2010) – Previous Year Ranked #5 – The first part of a three part series where I compared the lean principles I learned from the Lean Learning Center to the Toyota Principles. This post covers the first five Toyota Principles.
My next post will count down the Top 5 viewed posts of 2012.
