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We're refining our storage and setting things up differently. I've mentioned in other posts that I recently read the PLANET Crystal Ball Report (CBR) on Lean Management. The concept of 5 S'ing our facility made a lot of things make sense.
5 S stands for: Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain.
We've divvied up the shop into areas and used the criteria described in the CBR to help us think more critically about our work space. One of the primary goals of lean management is to reduce waste. According to lean management principals the majority of waste or non-value added steps come not when you create your part, product or service, but in the steps leading up the moment you create actual value for your customer. Everything in our shop has the potential to distract us from the primary objective of serving our customer. If it doesn't add value, why do we have it? Why do we do it?
If we're supposed to ask why we do something, ask yourself five times why? Eventually you get to a better answer. We've been challenging each other every day on why things get done a certain way. It has caused us to come up with some really good solutions to what might be mundane things. But all of it results in a more efficient operation.
I'm still curious to see what others have done in their shops to be more organized and how they solved particular problems. I'm always looking for ideas.
One thing that I realize is that you have to be willing to spend time creating and building the hard systems of your business. Just buying shelves isn't enough, you've got to spend time sorting and standardizing, labeling and organizing for the systems to work. We're spending time building things in our shop to make things in the future more efficient. It's taking time, but in the long run it makes more sense.
It's the little things, here is one example. We set up an area for our truck washing equipment. We developed an SOP and check list for washing the trucks. We defined what an "A" wash, "B" wash and "C" wash consist of. Now we can tell Jr. to do a "C" wash.
On the wash shelf located near the bathroom, you'll find a shelf with the bottles of cleaners, etc, a shelf with the specific 5 gal buckets for washing, we hung the scrub brushes (Red handle for beds (not to be used on clear cote finishes) and Blue handles for cabs and clear cote). We bought pumps for the soap so that rather than telling someone to pour some soap in the bucket, four gallons of warm water gets four pumps of soap. Not too much, not too little. Avoid waste.
We've begun timing how long it takes us to wash trucks. Right now we're just gathering information. But we're measuring the process so that by spring time, we can say it takes us 18 minutes to do XYZ. We can then continue to refine the process, our organization, to get it down to 14 minutes, etc.
We've done the same thing with our vehicle fluids check with a check list. Define the process, measure it and look for improvements. I've attached the spread sheet we use for this check list. It now gives us accountability that we didn't have before.
How have others applied these principals in your own business? Anyone have any check lists they use in their own business/shop they can share?
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