In the Wall Street Journal's (10/27) Business column, Julie Jargon writes, "5S is a key concept of the lean manufacturing techniques that have made makers of everything from cars to candy bars more efficient. The S's stand for sort, straighten, shine, standardize, and sustain." Recently, 5S "has been moving from the plant floor to the cubicle at hundreds of offices around the country, adding desk cleaning to the growing list of demands on employees." With regard to implementing 5S within a workplace, "it's not the initiative that's important, it's how managers communicate it," Gary Hayes, managing partner at Hayes Brunswick & Partners LLC explains. By clearly explaining "why they're doing something...most people will understand the rationale," he adds. According to a 5S inspector at one company who conducts quarterly inspections of the offices, supervisors should "figure out how to balance being too picky with upholding the purpose of the program," by letting go of some things that are not in compliance with the program.

When I first read this article, I thought- "What the heck is this? I know 6Sigma, and the Sigma is a take on standard deviation, and quality. Well, in the same vernacular, s stands for error, so is this a new quality approach?" So, I looked it up, and its all about cleaning up and maintaining a "tight ship" as my uncle in the navy used to say. It's from Japan, and the five s's refer to Japanese words that start with an s. Here's what the background is:

The first “S” is Sort. It is the process of removing all unnecessary items from the workplace area.
The second “S” is Set in Place. This is the process of moving the necessary items into the correct position for use.
The third “S” is Shine. This is the method of deep cleaning a machine or area to put it back into the condition it was when it was purchased.
The fourth “S” is Standardize. This is the process of standardizing the entire system, which is often the most difficult.
The last “S” is Sustain. Sustaining the system is thought to be one of the most difficult, primarily because experience proved years of cleaning and organization were not maintained. However, if the system is standardized in the fourth S, then sustaining it is much easier.

The best method of sustaining the system is to conduct audits. Care must be exercised so the audit system is not punitive. The 5S system relies on employee involvement and commitment at all levels, and a punitive audit system can destroy the system.

A good 5S implementation has many benefits. The assets of the company are kept in top condition which keeps the value high. Quality is kept at the level when the asset or machine was first installed. Maintenance costs are reduced as deterioration is immediately apparent. Setup times go down from better organization and reduced movement.

The best benefit is the morale improvement from an improved environment and culture.

Some managers think employees will not sustain a perfectly clean manufacturing environment. Like most systems, management is the reason the system succeeds or fails. Given the chance, employees will implement and sustain the 5S system. Most employees will choose an organized and clean workplace with a continuous improvement culture over a dirty disorganized facility.

Now, as a person who thinks a clean desk is the sign of a sick mind, I find this all rather amusing. But I also want to tell you that this very method is exactly the key to a better alarm handling system, and to improve the morale of operators who have to use it. Furthermore, as pointed out, operators will maintain a clean alarm system if you give them the tools and allow them to use them to do so. I know this because I have seen it.

I wont go into the intricate details, but let's examine the steps and how they apply.

Sort: Get the data from you system. use analysis tools to figure out what is going on in your control room. This is the first step to resolving alarm issues. If you don't have a handle on what is happening, then no amount of fixing is going to make it better.

Set In Place: Use that data to decide what is working and what is not. Eliminate things that are not working, and keep things that you have to. Note that as in past posts on this blog, this may mean you have to keep some things simply because you don't have the technology to get rid of them. In any case, clean up the work environment, and get rid of all the trash. Most people find a lot.

Shine: Now consider how to make this like a brand new alarm system. Document it. That may mean that you need to do a complete rationalization, or it may not. Risk factors will determine the depth of this step. Read my post on the engineer who decided to design his alarm system correctly if you have any questions about this. It takes the same amount of work to do it right as to do it wrong- so why not do it right? A fresh alarm design can cure a lot of ills, and gain the confidence of operations.

Standardize: This is often the step when you make a "gold standard" database of the configuration that you can refer to when things get out of hand again. It is the reference point of what you decided the perfect alarm system should look like if it were designed correctly to start with. Set the rules in place that make this become the rule rather than the exception, and design processes that keep it from ever going bad again.

Sustain: Design automated monitoring of the system so that it will indicate to you when it gets out of line. As is indicated above, with a shiny new alarm system, and very few spurious alarms on a regular basis, it becomse obvious very quickly when it goes bad, and the fixes are not only easy, but happen quickly as opertors want to have a clean system once they 've learned how valuable it can be.

That's it. Follow this method, and you will have a clean and shiny new alarm system that you can keep that way. You won't have to hire some fancy janitorial service to come in and clean it on a regular basis, because the users will keep it spic and span (as mom used to say). Nobody likes a messy system, but when it gets that way, few want to try to clean it up, or get it in order. They just find ways of adding to the junk since junk doesn't look bad on top of junk.

Now excuse me while I go clean my desk. Perhaps it will increase my own productivity?