The New 5S: Operator-Led Visuality
by Gwendolyn Galsworth, PhD
The case has been made and the defense rests. Over the last few issues of The Visual Thinker, I set out a number of arguments that can be summed up as follows: For 5S-in-the-West to make a permanent home for itself in a western company's continuous improvement/employee engagement model, it has to move away from seeking simple compliance as its result (meeting acceptable levels of neatness, cleanliness, and order) and seek instead a dynamic, open-ended, learning outcome.
I realized this intuitively early on when applications of traditional 5S did not gain traction with my clients. But it took me several years to work out the framework. In due course, I integrated four new elements into 5S-in-the-West, creating a powerful synergy:
1. Information Deficits. I named a different enemy: answers missing from the workplace-information deficits. Chronic info deficits became the foe we pursue, instead of dirt and disorder. Clearly, this pursuit requires a very different order of logic. As a result, operators have to call upon new aspects of their intelligence: They have to think. In addition (and please note that this is an added benefit and not the same as thinking), they have to learn.
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Look again at the visual solution in last week's issue-Gary Buys' double-function border. See how it represents operator-led visuality (the "new" 5). Gary invented this, I-driven, so he could know at-a-glance when the models changed over at the top of the stream-even though his is the last operation in the welding cell, over 30 feet away. Can you hear what his question (his motion) used to be: "Hey, has the model changed over yet? I need time to get my tools ready." Visual thinking of the first order!
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