Fostering a lean culture starts with you

  • Published
  • By 2nd Lt. Erik D. Luttkus
  • 71st Fighter Training Wing AFSO21 office
VANCE AIR FORCE BASE, Okla. --  Do you feel that you are doing too much work with too few resources? Is your time being spent searching for office supplies instead of using them to complete your job? Does it take you more time to flow work through your department than it does to create it? 

If so, a tool called 6S is available to help you develop a lean culture within your department. The tool, 6S, stands for sort, straighten, shine, standardize, sustain and safety. Using these six actions, you and your team can help create an environment where waste is minimized and efficiency increased. 

One of the best examples of a lean culture is found in maintenance bays. Tools are kept in a specific location usually marked by an outline or color. Materials are centralized where everyone has access. Inventory is kept to a minimum and therefore funds are saved. 

Ultimately, process flows around the maintenance bay are streamlined, saving time in areas such as movement of parts, people and setup. However, a lean culture does not have to remain only within the maintenance department. It can be implemented in any workplace, i.e. your office, where valuable time and resources can be saved. 

The 6S tool is composed of: 

Sort: Clean up and organize your workspace. Keep only what is necessary and move everything else to a common area. 

Straighten: Try to think visual, flow, and quick changeover. Label everything, color code, move to a location where there is ease of access, centralize common tools, and use tasks with little setup time. 

Shine: Take some time to clean and while cleaning, inspect your work area, tools, equipment, and supplies. 

Standardize: Develop easy-to-use and easy-to-maintain processes. Checklists and self-audits are ways of increasing standardized processes. 

Sustain: Continue to train your team and maintain the lean culture. Monitor your progress and expand the lean culture to other areas as they come along. 

Safety: Finally, ensure that no process improvement ever decreases the safety of your work area. 

Using 6S, you can create a stable foundation in order to establish a lean culture. A lean culture starts with you. Don't lose sight of your team goals as you work on your individual processes. Building this lean culture will save you time and eliminate waste. 

Another handy tool is the acronym DOWNTIME to help you work on eliminating types of waste -- defects, overproduction, waiting time, non-standard and over processing, transportation, inadequately used intellect, motion, and excess inventory. 

Your time is valuable -- 6S is here to help.