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See a sample reprint in PDF format. Order a reprint of this article nowSAN DIEGO -- Jay Scovie thought he knew how to deal with the latest mandate from corporate: He swept the clutter from his messy desk into boxes and tossed them in a closet.
But the 5S cop was on to him.
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. Lately, 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.
Jay Scovie
That means companies like Kyocera Corp., Mr. Scovie's employer, are patrolling to make sure that workers don't, for example, put knickknacks on file cabinets. To impress visitors, the company wants everything to be clean and neat. Meanwhile, doctors in Seattle are relearning where to stick their stethoscopes. And output from the printer at Toro Co., a Bloomington, Minn., lawn-mower maker, is sorted daily and tossed weekly.
The North American headquarters of Kyocera, a manufacturer of solar panels, copy machines and ceramic knives, adopted 5S in April at the behest of its Japanese parent.
It wasn't long before Dan Brown, Kyocera's newly appointed 5S inspector, started asking Mr. Scovie, the office's communications manager, about his boxes. ""It became a repeated topic of conversation,"" says Mr. Scovie, who eventually broke down and went through his stuff. He says he found things he had forgotten he had, including instructional videos on how to install solar panels.
""When I would go about my work prior to 5S, I'd view my work space as a unique Jay Scovie domain where I could find things based on a mental picture in my mind. It was efficient in certain ways, but not in others. It wasn't efficient if someone unfamiliar with my work habits had to find something in my work area,"" Mr. Scovie says.
Kyocera's version of 5S, which it calls ""Perfect 5S,"" not only calls for organization in the workplace, but aesthetic uniformity. Sweaters can't hang on the backs of chairs, personal items can't be stowed beneath desks and the only decorations allowed on cabinets are official company plaques or certificates.
While that may sound authoritarian, it's not the initiative that's important, it's how managers communicate it, says Gary Hayes, managing partner at Hayes Brunswick & Partners LLC, a leadership advisory firm in Bronxville, N.Y. ""If managers clearly explain why they're doing something, I think most people will understand the rationale. But if you say, 'We're doing this because 14 efficiency experts say it increases productivity,' then it becomes kind of Dilbert,"" he says, referring to the comic strip of satirical office humor.
Mr. Brown, the manager of Kyocera's production technology center, has tried to inject some humor into the process. He recently posed for a photo wearing a white T-shirt and flexing his biceps, Mr. Clean style. The picture will be posted to the company's internal Web site along with tips on maintaining a clean desk.
But in late September, armed with a digital camera and a four-page checklist, he was all business as he conducted his second quarterly 5S inspection of the offices.
When he got to the accounting department, he discovered a hook on a door and told cash-management assistant Deanna Svehla that doors are supposed to be free of such accouterments. ""But that's where I hang the Christmas decorations,"" she said.
""C'mon, like there aren't plenty of places to put decorations,"" he said, nodding at the orange and black Halloween tinsel strung along the outside of her cubicle. That's OK, it turns out, because it isn't permanent.
The neatness patrol at Kyocera's San Diego offices caught Jay Scovie hiding his mess. Now his desk, above, is the model of order.
Mr. Brown, 51 years old, a soft-spoken manager who has worked at Kyocera for 17 years, says policing his friends and colleagues often makes him feel uncomfortable. He noticed a whale figurine in Ms. Svehla's cubicle and decided to let it go. ""You have to figure out how to balance being too picky with upholding the purpose of the program,"" he said.
Employees in the main Kyocera office have been pretty good, achieving a total 5S compliance score of 88.9%. But people in the wireless-phone division in La Jolla haven't been as quick to embrace 5S. That division showed improvement during a separate audit the prior week, but it scored just 61.1%. ""They're more loosey-goosey,"" Mr. Brown says. ""They bring their surfboards to the office.""
After Virginia Mason Medical Center in Seattle implemented 5S in 2002, doctors, nurses and assistants now share desks grouped in pods so they can work more closely together and reduce the time they spend trying to find one another. That means each person is expected to keep his desk neat because someone on the next shift will be using it.
John Boze, coordinator of the hospital's spine clinic and a professed clutterbug, said it took a while to get the hang of organizing the piles of paperwork on his desk and sorting them into bins. His work space has improved, he says, but he can't seem to make those skills portable. ""My girlfriend says I need to 5S my desk at home. She says it looks like I'm building a nest.""
Employees created new places for everything to eliminate the need to hunt for things. But doctors and nurses in Mr. Boze's pod kept hanging the stethoscope in its old place on a hook, instead of putting it in the drawer marked ""stethoscope."" ""Eventually,"" says Mr. Boze, ""we had to remove the hook.""
Back at Kyocera, Mr. Scovie proudly showed Mr. Brown his tidy desk, which back in June could barely be seen for all the clutter, he admits.
When asked for a peek inside his drawers, Mr. Scovie tried to steer the conversation to the placement of a desk blocking his access to some filing cabinets. Pressed, Mr. Scovie reluctantly agreed to open his drawers, one of which he warned was ""really nasty."" Inside was a box brimming with CDs, small electronic devices and items Kyocera no longer manufactures. ""Obviously, we're at the sorting stage here,"" he said.
Write to Julie Jargon at julie.jargon@wsj.com
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30.18 | 1.80 | 4:08p.m. |
SAN DIEGO -- Jay Scovie thought he knew how to deal with the latest mandate from corporate: He swept the clutter from his messy desk into boxes and tossed them in a closet.
But the 5S cop was on to him.
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. Lately, 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 ...
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