Clarity and Joy through 5S, by 5S
5S'ing 5S, too many S's
Ever notice the longer something’s been around the the more of it there is? Ice cream flavors, automatic car transmission speeds, the government. Should be a good thing. I love new ice cream flavors. Speeds in a car tranny, perhaps less so, limit 6. My car has 8 and is generally just confused. Government? Must I go on? But I’m not here to complain about the government, I’m here to complain about, and hopefully solve, the overgrowth in the 5S methodology. For readers not familiar, it’s how us industrial goblins philosophize about cleaning. It’s called 5S, it’s part of the LEAN manufacturing methodology, and we give each other different colored belts depending on how good we lean out, or improve, what ever it is we do. Think process optimization. Find and eliminate the wastes involved. Simplify. Everything you do is a process, and I’m sure you can do them better. Or wish you could.
So what do the 5 S’s do and why do I want less of them?
Seiri - Sorting.
Seiton - Organizing or Straighten .
Sesiso - Cleaning or shining.
Seiketsu - Sanitization, standardizing.
Shitsuke - Sustaining.
Yes it’s Japanese, yes we adopted it in the 80’s, no we don’t do it correctly. I’ve seldom seen anyone do all 5 S’s when they do a 5S “event”. Which is strange onto itself as one doesn’t go do a 5S, it’s not a thing. It’s a very similar misnomer to the modern use of “Science”, another one of those S’s. You don’t go and do a science, or trust “the science”. You practice it. It’s a methodology. Key here is “practice”, you gata do it a lot, and most people are very bad at it for a very long time. Me? I’m trash at 5S. Am I way better than almost everyone that tried to train me in 5S? Yes.
Perhaps I’m most appalled by the slow inclusion of additional S’s to 5S. 6S became a thing some years back and stands for “Safety”. Then there’s the 7S methodology which just has extra S’s for self-discipline and a Japanese word that starts with S but translates into “Determination”. Ouch. How about “strength of character”? Thanks Thesaurus.com!
So we now have a bunch of S’s on-top of a rather large quantity of existing S’s. And there’s probably more S’s to come still. I’ll introduce S number eight, “somebody shoot me.” Not sure we need all of them. What a mess. Very confusing. If only there was a tried and true method out there somewhere, which could help us in our very precarious situation. Hmm. Ooh I know!
Sorting: The extra S’s are obviously going into the trash can. Self-discipline isn’t very actionable, as in, can’t go onto a check sheet like “standardize”. Safety is the result of 5S; abstractions aren’t actionable either.
Organization: Shine should come before (s)Organize. Clean as you sort.
Cleaning: Looking good, looking good.
Standardize: New rule - no more random S’s!
Sustain: Good news! 5S is part of the Kai Zen philosophy. It’s an operational mode. Since you’re supposed to be in this mode all the time anyway, we can technically get rid of this S!
Now in practice, only the first 3 are useful for the everyday, I’m not being facetious about it either. Standardize is hard to pull off if you pivot in your layout frequently. It can be done if deployed with elements of fluidity, which is antithetical to standardizing, and people hate it for that reason. Further, extra caution is required for “Sustain”, which is basically policing, as it may devolve into “Stasi”, a very unpleasant S word.
Just keep it simple. The best S word out there. The whole point of things like 5S is to habituate organized mannerisms into people’s daily routines. No-one likes to clean. It’s gross, especially in areas that have been let go. And no-one wants to learn acronyms. Most companies do 5S and FOD (foreign object and/or debris) awareness training when onboarding. They are always terrible. Even the training slides feel dusty, I don’t know how they manage to do that. 5S events usually feel like punishments. The way the whole thing is presented and taught is tyrannical, boring and overly complicated.
So here’s my approach lately when I want something cleaned. 1C. Stands for Clean. I don’t train, I just start cleaning. Enough people feel guilty and start pitching in. Or at least feel too ashamed to start a new mess. Then people feel better as they realize they’ve been living in a dumpster. Then they start to clean. Then they find new things to clean, and maybe they want to organize a little better. And maybe they want to put some rules in place to maintain their new clean environments. It’s how our brains work.
Not everyone gets it. Some will fight you. *cough* middle-mangers *cough*. But then you know who not to work with. It’s a win-win.