Over the past 20 years, I have visited numerous manufacturing plants in the United States, Canada, Mexico, Venezuela, Peru, Spain, and China to assess performance and workplace organization issues. I was able to take a close look at their trades and see both the positives and negatives of those trades.

While each plant had its own strengths and weaknesses, one fact was clear: many of the plants had undertaken some form of workplace organization, some had implemented 5S. Neither was getting the results they wanted from the effort. Some only practiced it when the senior management visit was scheduled, others only made half attempts to implement 5S, and few had serious and long-lasting follow-up.

In effect, they were simply following the movements, like writing it down in their mission statements, the management loudly proclaiming their virtues but taking little interest in the mechanics of day-to-day life and claiming to have created a visual workspace when in reality everything they did was little. more than creating posters. Clutter and unnecessary items were for the most part apparent and the employee had little apparent understanding of the need to keep it free of unnecessary items.

The fact is, we know what to do. 5S is a lean approach to manufacturing based on the Toyota Production System. Lean management’s job is to identify and eliminate all forms of waste, including:

• Overproduction: production exceeding customer requirements
• Inventory: keep or buy excess materials
• Transportation: unnecessary handling
• Waiting: delays or downtime
• Movement: actions of people that do not add value
• Overprocessing – unnecessary processing steps
• Correction: scrap production or parts requiring rework.
• Do not use human resources: do not implement the ideas / suggestions of the employees.
• There are many impediments to the implementation of lean manufacturing and especially to the proper use of 5S principles and practices:
• Incorrect measurements of plant performance
• Wrong approach: too much attention to results, not enough to improve processes.
• Lack of confidence in the worker’s ability to recognize and solve problems;
• Unwillingness to invest time and resources in properly implementing 5S
• Failure to recognize their obligation of survival to all stakeholders and that change is the key to survival.

Incorrect measurements of plant performance

Performance is affected by many factors, especially when the focus is on the short term. Most of these factors are beyond management’s immediate control. Cash flow – the lifeblood of any business – is affected by interest rates and can have a dramatic impact on your plant’s profitability. Government policies and excessive regulation affect profits in many ways. Also, sales volumes or product prices affect a plant’s profit level. When these factors have a positive impact on profits, the operation is considered successful and is handsomely rewarded even if management practices are ineffective and wasteful. When they negatively impact earnings, even the best managers are often viewed as abysmal failures and removed from their jobs.

Worst of all, earnings measurements are easily manipulated by “cooking the books.” In most of the facilities I visited, it was very common and obvious that management was manipulating inventory levels in one way or another. A plant manager told me that while he wanted to reduce inventories, to keep his efficiency ratings high, he had to overproduce during downtime. This led to higher inventory levels which, if reduced to the right levels, would negatively impact their profitability measure. Too great a focus on profitability as a performance measure generally results in short-term thinking. What incentive is there for a company that, driven by profitability measures, invests in a 5S project that could have higher costs in the short term and has the potential for significant savings in the long term?

Wrong approach

People tend to do what they are rewarded for. If your focus is on equipment utilization rather than customer demand, your equipment will operate at full capacity, despite actual demand. The result is overproduction, which is the basis for virtually all manufacturing waste. Focusing on responsibility for the use of the machine has the undesirable effect of increasing waste.

To effectively and continuously improve performance and eliminate waste, all processes must be analyzed, understood, and then controlled. Measuring process effectiveness will shift the focus to long-term improvements like 5S and allow companies to reward managers for their actual performance. On the other hand, measuring results only promotes manipulation and short-term thinking.

Lack of confidence in the skills of the worker.

When management is unwilling to develop its employees and allow them the freedom to manage their own processes, they will miss the opportunity to capture the full potential of the organization. I firmly believe that the solution to all the problems faced by a company or plant is currently in the four walls of that facility.

Unwillingness to invest time and resources in properly implementing 5S

Management is driven by two things:

• Budget
• Calendar

Anything that interferes with either is seen as an enemy of management, as a result, many managers are only half supportive of new ideas and projects that they are unfamiliar with. This is compounded by the fact that most people who come up with a lean initiative like 5S don’t take the time to code it into the language of the business. They talk about generalities and successes of other organizations. They fail to present a legitimate business case for change. Managers have legitimate questions like:

• How will this affect the budget? Is it a legitimate investment opportunity or just another flavor of the month?
• How can we minimize the impact on the schedule and still provide people to plan and implement the 5S? Where do the extra people come from? Etc.

Many managers simply don’t believe in the effectiveness of lean manufacturing and the 5S in particular. Many of the managers I spoke to defended poor manufacturing practices that they routinely employed to keep their productivity numbers high and their bonuses on track.

Failure to recognize its obligation of survival to all interested parties.

Many managers feel that change is unnecessary. The company made money before the recession, and the good times will return when it ends. The focus is often on job security rather than job security, the problem is that a sea change is taking place in the global economy and companies are facing global competition like never before. Many managers do not see the change that has occurred and the threat it poses to their own survival. They prefer to stick their heads in the sand rather than address the need for their own survival; after all, the government will rescue them! The fact is that jobs (including those of managers) are changing and it is better for managers to change their focus to secure their employment and let the job change as needed.

One of the key elements of the manager’s job was control, which has been modified to include empowerment. To survive and stay in employment, managers must hand over some of their control to employees, allowing them more control over their work area and work flow. 5S is a great example of how to effectively empower employees while retaining necessary control over budget and schedule.

Produce the desired results

If the plant is operating effectively (and has properly linked the operational measure to financial objectives), profitability will follow. The key to making the 5S produce the desired results is to link it with the goals and strategic objects of the company. The main goal of most companies is to make money by producing a product or service that meets the needs of their customers. This fact is often lost in management’s vision statements and high-purpose statements. The vision should be what your company is going to do to achieve that goal of making money. The mission statement is how you will fulfill it. Typical purpose statements made by various levels of management that do not reflect the vision and mission statement simply confuse and divert the attention of the people who have to carry out the mission. The solution to this problem is the use of strategic thinking to define the business needs in accordance with the stated vision and mission.

The next element to ensuring success is refocusing the workforce on a new set of measures and processes that focus on increasing throughput, decreasing inventory, and reducing operating costs. This means abandoning many of the traditional measures like efficiency altogether and looking more at effectiveness. This will require analyzing your processes for the value they add to your products or services. In the short term, this can lead to increased non-productive time. Smart managers will take advantage of this downtime to develop better uses of this non-productive time, such as training, total productive maintenance, team building, and continuous improvement activities. Proper training and management will allow workers to spend their downtime improving the processes in which they work, as well as their workplace. By eliminating unnecessary and non-value-added activities like overproduction and by empowering and training your workforce, your company can improve its competitiveness and ensure its survival.

Your employees and support staff will need all the tools and techniques of lean manufacturing and 5S practices to sustain, self-audit, and continually improve the workplace and their jobs. They will need a well thought out and planned program that is supported by management at all levels. Keep in mind that the most frequently missing element is management commitment. If you invest everyone’s time and commitment in 5S, and some people fail to maintain the standard, the program will crash. Management must support the program with enforceable policies and procedures.

Regular monitoring is also required to ensure that processes are working as intended or are modified in a controlled manner when necessary. Management must not only commit resources, they must commit their time to get involved. They must lead from the front and have high visibility in the workplace.