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Management Services Spring 2012
they’ll say that an engineer or an art director has never lost their computer mouse or stapler on their desk. Or they’ll think of the inane 5S policies that Kyocera Corporation has in place which, as The Wall Street Journal reports: “Not only calls for organisation in the workplace, but aesthetic uniformity. Sweaters can’t hang on the backs of chairs, personal items can’t be stowed
beneath desks and the only decorations allowed on cabinets are offi cial company plaques or certifi cates.”5 But that’s not what I’m talking about. 5S for knowledge workers means 5S for the information you manage, not rules about where you can hang your sweater.
Individual information 5S It’s easy to picture 5S in a manufacturing setting: clean machines, tape outlines around equipment, shadow boards for tools, a garbage-free fl oor etc. In some respects 5S for manufacturing is easy because the work at each station is done exactly the same way, every time, by each person. It’s easy to defi ne the ‘right’ set-up and layout.
But what does 5S look like in an offi ce? Knowledge workers do dozens of different types of jobs each day – reading and writing emails, preparing spreadsheets, analysing large budget binders, calling customers. Moreover, each person does it a bit differently – there’s no ‘right’ way to prepare a sales presentation. How can you bring 5S to a fundamentally variable environment?
Information 5S in an offi ce frees you from the waste of looking for the things you need. Those things are both the tools of your trade – the computer, a stapler, pens, printer paper etc – along with the information you’re working on – a budget, the draft of a speech, a new purchasing policy.
A good 5S system makes it fast and easy to access those things so you can do the important work you’re being paid to do. But that’s just the beginning.
Seiri (sort) means making decisions about
Effi ciency
each individual piece of information that has accumulated over time – emails, fi les, reports, journals, presentations, links to websites etc. Whether you choose to actually use it for a project this week, move it to a fi le for future reference or toss it, the simple act of deciding what to do with each item can reveal systemic (or personal) problems by forcing you to assess how you work. For example, if you’re a medical assistant, a sloppy pile of patient charts on your desk might indicate that there’s something wrong with the system of retrieving, reviewing, signing and fi ling essential patient information. You can also be sure that whatever is wrong with the system will lead to lost charts, missing information and wasted time in looking for it. Notice, though, that the charts wouldn’t be visible without cleaning up the information fl otsam and jetsam that wash up on your desk.
Seiton (set in order) ensures that critical information can be found quickly and easily. This is the wisdom behind a surgeon’s instrument tray being laid out precisely the same way every time and a chef’s mise-en-place being set up and ready. When there’s an emergency or at 8pm on a Saturday night with every table full, neither the surgeon nor the chef can afford the time to hunt for something in a panic.
But even if you don’t work in an operating room or run a restaurant kitchen, what happens when you or your boss go on holiday? If activity slows down or grinds to a halt because the necessary information can’t be found, there’s a real problem with the system: Daily work should fl ow in your absence as smoothly as if you were there.
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