Why does this topic of schedule, task and work come in mind for the 5S. It seem to be out of the schedule for this web – it seems. But, somehow personally for me, this is very important. As with chores that we pass to our children, or a task that we pass to our subordinate or employee, the same works for 5S. As in term of work, 5S generally is something that you need to do on a regular basis. The best being a sustained schedule which we perform, the sorting, arranging, cleaning, lubrication and re-tightening. There is a need that a regular slot is being made available for all to follow.
I know that it may not be usual for somebody to arrange a schedule or slot at home, but it is recommended if we were to have a good and happy house. Imagine while I am working last time, we have slotted our 5S task every Friday from 3.30 pm to 5.00 pm for this purpose Every Friday 1.5 hours is slotted so that a 5S is being implemented. When I did that for my organization, I did the same, every Friday afternoon is a 5S day, and every month is a self audit days and every quarter is a internal 5S audit days. This is to ensure that we have a continuous improvement when we do our job.
Why schedule?
But what about our house, is it to be the same. What do you think? My personal view, you may argue with me, is the same. We need to have a schedule for sorting, arranging, cleaning, lubrication and re-tightening even at home. We need to continuously perform sorting items in the house on a regular basis, else the work will start to compound and at sometime we will feel overwhelm like when we first started to do the task.
“Anyone that has a job that takes them away from home, I think, can understand the difficulties in maintaining consistency, not only with your family and those you love but with your friends.”
Heath Ledger
Be consistent
The key here is consistency on when we are doing the 5S, not to do it once in a while but to do it everyday. To make it a habit, then only the magic of 5S will come. The step 5 of 5S is all about consistency. Muslim around are required to pray 5 times a day from dust till dawn in the direction of Mecca. This really require consistency in their parts, especially in the nation with temperate climate where sun rises and sets at different time of the day throughout the year.
In this case, what ever you do, the most important part is to do the best that we could to make our work on 5S to be consistent. I would propose that everybody have a schedule, a rota and have a public display on who need to do what and in what location. We are talking not only on the activity but also the space within the activity However, one thing for sure, when we talk about 5S it need to come top down, i.e. from the leader to the follower, or from parent to the child. It is a show and tell, and not tell and figure out. The Japanese got it right, to do a good 5S we need to be humble. We need to do our best achieve almost perfection. But, we need to realized that only the Creator is perfect, and needs nothing to exist.
Below is my suggestion on how to manage rotation, with 5S concept:
- Make the board obvious and large so that everybody could see the task that is needed – use a signboard strategy for this.
- Put a layout of every person’s area by room, by space, why not even by the shelve or rack level. We do not need to print the actual layout based for architect drawing, just get some rulers, measure and draw. Make it a fun activity for the family to start with.
- Working with kids or even adults, put a start or some other interesting thing to highlight accomplishment. Trust me, even in my class of young adults and even older giving a star or something equivalent do improve motivation. The idea is to make the whole activity as a game and to keep some score on it. Who want to anything withing looking forward to something.
- Have a container for anything that is not sorted, and out a number on it with the ownership on who shall dispose them and when. In 5S and in life ownership is important, as everybody means nobody at the end. Put a deadline as well. It is good to train our kids and those working for us and even ourselves on the important of deadline. Procrastination is the mother of all things that break loose. If only we take action now.
At the end the above is just my suggestion, there are a lot more that needs to be done to improve the overall, but layout is important as we need to improve the movement of people within the layout and to have the needed responsibility in it.