3S - Sweep, sort, standardise
PART OF THE LEAN MINDSET
3S - Sweep, Sort Standardise
One of the easiest things to follow in 2-Second Lean is 3S-ing. 3S stands for “Sweep, Sort, Standardise”. It is something that you should do every morning before work starts to ensure your work area is the best it can be.
Sweep
Take some time to sweep and clean your area. Remove any clutter or rubbish and give things a wipe-down to get it looking really nice.
Getting rid of all the dirt and debris gives you a chance to really inspect your area.
Sort
Take a moment to sort through your tools and equipment. Decide what is essential for the day’s work and what is not.
Anything that is not needed should be removed to not clutter up your space.
Standardise
Create some simple standards and rules for yourself or your team to follow. This can be setting up a routine for the jobs or setting a standard for where to keep your items.
Use visual controls to keep things in the right places. Use labels to mark tools with where they should go. Add colour co-ordination to your equipment to make it quicker to identify.
Following 3S will be one of the key things to do each day to identify improvements. Keeping each area clean and free of clutter will help you to see exactly what you are working with each day. This will enable you to see problems far easier than before. A good mentality towards 3S-ing sets you up to easily make continuous improvements.
Example
In the toy factory, the workbench where the wheels are screwed onto the wooden cars has gotten messy and cluttered. The flow of work on this bench has been affected by the tools being difficult to find amongst all the mess.
Sweep
The operator starts by sweeping and cleaning the workbench and the surrounding area. All the dirt and debris are removed and he can start to see the issues. This is the Sweep part of the 3S process.
Sort
He then looks through all the tools on the bench and notices that only 2 of the 5 on the workbench are actually needed. The extra 3 are removed so they don’t clutter up the space. This is the Sort part of the 3S process.
Standardise
The operator gets some foam and puts his tools in there, clearly marked and labelled. He has implemented a new standard with some visual controls. He can now ensure that this standard is followed daily to keep his tools in the right place, exactly where they are needed. This is the Standardise part of the 3S process.
