I was preparing for the Gemba Academy webinar that I'm doing next Tuesday (you can still sign up) on Stories about the Eight Types of Waste in Healthcare.
I found this fun picture from about 2008 that I decided to incorporate into my talk. I was leading some 5S work in an X-ray area, where the focus was on preventing delays to patient flow by making sure staff had the right supplies available in the right locations.
The team played a prank on me while I was away from our conference room. :-)
I dubbed this the 9th type of waste… wasting tape to do unnecessary “5S” type work. Putting tape around my laptop wouldn't be Lean, it would be L.A.M.E.
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For a second, I thought that was a photo from your home office. Do you still have kanban for your paper towel supply? :)
:-)
Yes, the kanban bin sizes are a bit smaller, since we’re in a condo, not a house, and I don’t have room for those Costco mega packs.
So, I go to the store more often!
OK, Mark, maybe in this instance LAME, but way back in the day, I did something similar in my office to guide the nightly cleaning crew. I was tired of my workplace being a mess when I would arrive in the morning. It actually worked…so while I think tape is funny as a waste, I have to say it can be useful depending on the context. :-)
It’s not L.A.M.E. if it’s helpful to you… and it sounds like the tape was your choice and to your benefit… so great! :-)
I completely agree, but it depends where one is in the journey.
I once taught a group the fundamentals of Lean. For folks in that group, first learning about Lean and the application of 5S might inspire them to give it a shot. And, if the application is something silly such as applying the “every thing has a home and every home has a place” for someone’s desk, then at least they’re applying the principle.
Silly application, but we need to celebrate the effort.
I see your point and I try not to be too hard on people who apply a tool in a way that doesn’t really solve a problem.
If a person taped off their own desk… well OK, cool, they are trying. I would celebrate the effort and realize they will move on to more meaningful improvements. Being discouraging doesn’t help anybody.
Now, if a manager or a “lean improvement specialist” FORCED people to tape off their desks, I might challenge them a little more and ask “what was the problem being solved? did this solve a problem?”
So I see a difference between initiating something and forcing others to do something. It’s more “L.A.M.E.” when it’s forced in a topdown way.
A classic example of people deploying a tool to fix a problem that probably doesn’t exist without understanding the principle the tool was designed to achieve.
Sadly the classic western approach to Lean deployment destined to fail.
It *would* be an example of that, but it was a joke… a prank. I think I taught the team well that you don’t improve things by merely putting tape around everything.