MORE THOUGHTS ON OFFICE 5S

Look at trying to make improvements to your work area first. Why? We get immediate personal benefits. We have less stress and more time. With more time we can do more 5S activities.

Look for hidden 5S opportunities (opportunities is a nice way to say problems). Such as paper flow (why do we need paper?), procedures, policies (are they out of date and need to be revised\updated?).

Are there policies and procedures that we should be following and are not? Use 5S tools to help Standardize and Sustain them.

May need to use other tools to work on these problems:
Such as the TOC 5 Step problem solving form

A little input from TOC:

Ely Goldratt, author of the book "The Goal", and originator of the Theory of Constraints training often asks this question of his students, "What are you waiting for?"

You know how to identify waste and substandard performance. You've been trained on how to list the cause of constraints. You also know how to list cures and subordinate others to help. But, most of all, you know how good it feels to implement improvement and elevate a constraint. So...why do you wait?

But what if we don't do anything about our constraints. Sure we can rationalize doing nothing.
This type of behavior is called constraint mis-management.
1. Ignore-Pretend the problem doesn't exist.
2. Rationalize-Use insulation layers (excuses such as: it's not our fault; Our problems are different; Yes, but bad things will happen; We can't it's against the policy; We won't get the support,etc,etc,etc) to justify inaction.
3. Dominate-Keep the problem to ourselves, don't include anyone in resolving it.
4. Stagnate-Nothing changes, constraint continues.
5. Fail-Unsolved problems breeds failure.