Quantifying the benefits of 5S Implementation

[ashishkaul]

Dear Amit
I fully agree with you that it is hard for people to appreciate the benefits if they have not experienced it!! I can suggest to you that you do it in a pilot project (Small area) and then show them the benefits- reduction in wastes, Improved Floor Space utilization, Improved safety and reduction in frustrations while seking/storing things. Once 5S is in place, people will suddenly realize that a lot of space has been created "OUT of Nowhere".

 

[sulkinsf]

Actually, I am facing problem in convincing some of european plants of my company, that 5S can be effective in cost reduction or improving productivity. While selling any idea, we need to provide some facts and/or cash benefits. Some units say that its is just improvised cleaning and nothing more.

Hi Amit,

How are you measuring your lean activities AND who is doing the measuring?

Do you have primary visual displays on the floor?
Are the work center members performing the measurements?
Are they measuring productivity, safety, cost savings, setup time, defects, scrap, quality, etc?

5S needs to be moving your indicators. Is the problem here that you are not measuring these indicators or that you dont know how to tie the indicators to your 5S activity?

Let us know and we can direct suggestions.

For example,

You should have a baseline for travel during setups. 5S/suggestions/kaizen should be reducing the travel. If you do a kaizen blitz you should have a before and after. If you have a suggestion, you should have a before and after. Your 5S audits should be quantifying improvements too.

If your not there yet. Consider doing a 5S blitz. Quantify travel, space consolidated, safety improvements (in terms of a safety score improvement), consolidate supply stores for parts and search reduction, etc. Setups and maintenance are usually very juicy targets. Boneyards can also be good targets, especially if you are constrained on space or paying for offsite storage.

Regards,

Steve.

 

[Marki]

Amit,

I tried to attach a PowerPoint presentation (but I think it's too big) to provide an overview of a 5S Kaizen we did last year. One of the big gains that we were able to demonstrate in this event was Labor Efficiency. We were able to eliminate some Overtime hours and avoided the need to hire a third shift and we conservatively estimated savings at $55,000. If we had added the benefits, etc into the savings figures the number would have been higher.

I'm not sure if this is what you are looking for but it should at least give you an idea of the type of gains you can get just by focusing on 5S. If you would like a copy of the PowerPoint presentation just provide me an email address.

Harold

@ Harold:
I couldnt find the attached file with the presentation of the overview 5S results, can I ask you to send it to me as well? It would be really helpfull. Here is my email: m.sokolova(at)seznam(dot)cz
Thanks a lot!