Are you ready to rethink how you work now or how you can improve your shop floor processes further? Then consider adopting 5S practices. Here are five steps to begin working more efficiently.
Moving to a new approach on the machine shop floor can be tricky and affects not just processes but also the culture of the business. And, there’s also the critical fact, that it can be a challenge to get started amid ongoing work and production demands.
With 5S, one of the benefits is that a team can make small changes and then expand on them. Essentially, 5S requires just these five steps: sort, set, shine, standardize and sustain.
If a business engages the entire team and begins to address each one on one project or manufacturing line, it can work through the process, resolve any issues and then extend the approach.
When faced with the culture hurdles that come with change in any business, it makes sense to get employees to think about what’s possible—the outcomes—rather than the comfort they have in how they work now. As Henry Ford said, “If you always do what you always did, you’ll always get what you’ve always got.”
Communication will be critical. Adopting a new approach to how the machine shop works will require sharing information and details of the 5S adoption strategy and a roadmap up, down and across the business.
Here’s the five-stop approach to move toward 5S and lean manufacturing.
