Everyone raves about the benefits of 5S and it’s true that the tool can work wonders for eliminating waste, attaining standardisation and engaging your employees. But, we have an operator with an unhealthy obsession with ensuring everything is in its right place.
This individual, who we’ll call Bill, is a shopfloor lifer and has been working at our site, which makes sheet metal and fabricated steel products, since the ‘70s. He’s one of those guys who you can set your watch by: arriving on site at 7.55am for the 8am shift; taking the same anti-clockwise route past the supervisor’s office, and taking care not to step on the cracks in the concrete as he goes. With his love of precision and order, Bill’s was the first hand in the air when it came to implementing 5S when we began our CI programme four years ago. He thrived with the principles of sort, set, shine, standardize, and sustain. Bill saw 5S as management endorsement of his way of working. Bill cajoled his operators into action and his shift team blitzed our 5S audits.
Everything seemed rosy, until we started to factor in some safety activity. The first alarm sounded when a risk assessment red flagged the placement of a sharps bin near a pedestrian walkway broaching Bill’s area. The auditor correctly spotted that the bin could cause a trip. Bill was asked to move the bin and did so, but, one week on, the container miraculously returned to the yellow taped square of the floor marked ‘sharps bin’. Things escalated when a delivery error from a key supplier meant we needed extra pallet trucks in the warehouse. Bill has a truck parked at a perfect right angle and signed ‘pallet truck’. But, when he was asked for an emergency loan, Bill gave the warehouse manager short shrift. He admonished him for trying to mess up his area ahead of that morning’s 5S audit. There were a few handbags but Bill kept his truck.
I don’t want to lose an advocate for 5S in our factory but how do I inject some pragmatism into Bill’s outlook? I’m wary of being accused of hypocrisy.
CI Dilemma expert view: Paul Healing, COO, Project 7
Firstly, I am pleased to hear that your people were ‘raving’ about the benefits of 5S. I’ve been in CI roles for more than 30 years and most of the people I meet ‘rant’ about 5S as a housekeeping gimmick.
When the principles of 5S are truly understood, it does enable the identification and elimination of waste.
Bill’s situation can be described by the old adage ‘a change imposed is a change opposed’; a phrase coined by Spencer Johnson in his book Who Moved My Cheese.
In this particular case, a working knowledge of human motivation would have been useful. As leaders of change, we need to understand what motivates Bill and how this motivation can be harnessed to help the organisation, the customer, Bill and his colleagues.
In an organisational setting some people are motivated to towards power, some towards affiliation and others towards achievement. In simple terms; if motivated towards power, individuals want to control and influence others, like to win arguments, enjoy competition, status and recognition.
If motivated towards achievement individuals have a strong need for challenging goals. They like to receive regular feedback on their progress and often prefer to work alone.
If motivated towards affiliation, people want to belong to the group. They favour collaboration over competition and don’t like high risk or uncertainty.
It is clear from the general description of Bill’s systematic and methodical nature that 5S would appeal to his intrinsic values and mindset. I would hazard a guess that Bill is motivated by power. This is transparent from his behavioural pattern when working autonomously. Hence the conflicts and complications when the general principles of 5S are confused with rock solid and absolute standards that now need refereeing by senior management.
This is a common situation where the ‘principle’ of a CI technique is confused with the ‘system’ designed to deploy it and the ‘tools’ through which it is implemented. For example, in Bill’s case the tool that is the yellow marking tape to demarcate a position has been translated to the principle of: ‘by the power of 5S, I own this place’. This was always likely to happen for Bill. But it doesn’t have to be the default outcome. We have to deal with the Bills and the other main personality types described above.
So, always begin by asking yourself;
- Did we understand the ‘problem’ that the organisation, and Bill, was suffering from before we prescribed 5S as a solution? So many companies do 5S without identifying the problem.
- Did we conduct basic stakeholder analysis using a systematic approach like the power, achievement and affiliation model [McClelland, 1961]?
- Did we explain the principle of 5S before handing out the yellow tape?
In summary, introduce CI Tools based on a problem, not on a predefined sequence of systems or tools. Know your people and create a plan that helps the company, them and you be successful in that order.
