5s for the Information Worker
Over the recent holidays, I embarked on a backup, cleanup, and Office 2007 upgrade for my PC. As part of the process, I realized that it would be a good idea to take a look at the 5s concept from an information worker perpsective, since e-mail and spreadsheets are the "tools" and "dies" used by many in the corporate world today, including many lean practitioners.
Classic definition of 5s, quoted from the iSixSigma glossary at https://www.isixsigma.com/dictionary/5S-486.htm
Seiri - Put things in order (remove what is not needed and keep what is needed)
Seiton - Proper Arrangement (Place things in such a way that they can be easily reached whenever they are needed)
Seiso - Clean (Keep things clean and polished; no trash or dirt in the workplace)
Seiketsu - Purity (Maintain cleanliness after cleaning - perpetual cleaning)
Shitsuke - Commitment (Actually this is not a part of '4S', but a typical teaching and attitude towards any undertaking to inspire pride and adherence to standards established for the four components)
I evaluated the relevance of these concepts for an information worker, and rated my own performance in some of these areas:
1. My laptop, combined with my smartphone and my corporate Exchange server, is essentially my "workspace." I have over 4 gigbytes of e-mail and documents just from the current fiscal year at Microsoft - is my workspace clean and "in order"? Can I find what I need even with a powerful tool such as Windows Desktop Search? How could I use the capabilities of Windows Vista to help find, use, and share information?
2. I am highly mobile and work both with internal Microsoft staff as well as with a variety of external partners and suppliers. Have I chosen the right way to organize, communicate, and publish key data so that the right data is accessible at the right time, online or offline, to the constituents who need it? Are the tools I need at my fingertips? Was I truly using the full capabilities of Outlook, Sharepoint, Groove, and Windows Mobile to make my life easier? I think this point has a lot of commonality with many lean leaders who manage or mentor a virtual team, and face the challenge of reporting data both at the shop floor or even PLC level and doing rollups for executive managment.
3. Have I set up standard processes to automate analysis and reporting, and establish workflows for my virtual team as much as possible?
4. Have I secured my data in such a way as to enable access for the right people while minimizing risk? In many ways this is part of the "sustain" tenet of 5s, and some companies have explicitly added safety and security as a "5s plus" concept.
In an ongoing series, I'll be jotting notes on ways I have found to create simple solutions to some of these challenges using the tools I already have on my desktop. I hope this will helpful for lean or six sigma professionals who face similar challenges.
- Marc from the Lean Team