Here’s my most recent YouTube video, “What Is 5S?”  Yeah, it’s kind of DIY (I used a free screen cast software called “Screen-Cast-O-Matic”, which does a good job of very basic…very basic…screen cast capture, editing, and uploading to YouTube), but the basic message is good.  I’ve come across a V8 powered screencast and video editing software that should up my game so look for future videos coming to your theater soon.

While you’re there, check out my other two videos by searching on Chagrin River Consulting.  And, hey, subscribe to my YouTube Channel, why don’t ya?

I haven’t written much about error proofing in my several years of blogging about lean manufacturing.  When I teach, I don’t go into error proofing much.  The primary reason is that error proofing is (to my way of thinking, at any rate) very specific to a particular task, activity, or process.  When I’ve looked at literature about error proofing, specific examples relevant to specific equipment or tasks are given.  I always find myself thinking, “That’s great…if one has that type of equipment or is carrying out that particular task.”

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In our last post, we talked a bit about 5S audits and argued that teams of operators should self-audit their own areas rather than having “external” audits conducted.  In this post, we’ll go over the process for teaching teams how to audit themselves.  I’ve also provided a download of the form I use for all this.

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We all know that an important part of sustaining 5S is auditing or assessing the status of 5S at any given point in time.  The internet is full of 5S audit forms.  In many cases, audits are carried out by “outsiders”…folks from outside the department that’s being audited.  It’s kind of like being back at school where we turned our test in and got back a grade.  If the grade was good, we were relieved.  If the grade was bad, we huffed indignantly, sure that the teacher had it in for us.  5S audits shouldn’t be like that.

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So, at this point, you have a pretty good value stream map of your current state.  I doubt if it looks as neat as the one I included in my last post.  In fact, it probably looks more like this:

Example Value Stream Map  (Sorry it’s a link instead of an actual diagram.  It’s a PDF, as you’ll see, and this is the only way I could include it.)

You’ll see the addition of the Tool Room and Purchasing, lots of places that material sits, lots of people who need to see the Production Schedule, and a “contingency routing”  which was used when the equipment in the “preferred routing” was down.    (You’ll also see a Future State VSM but don’t pay any attention to that for now.)  That’s how these things go…they can get messy.  This VSM team met twice a week for about six weeks to get just the current state map completed.  Again, that’s how these things go.

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We ended up last time with a simple map that showed, basically, where stuff gets moved, where stuff gets something done to it, and where stuff sits waiting to be moved or have something done to it.  So, we’re off to a good start.  Now, we need to add some boxes and arrows that show where information moves or sits or is acted on.

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