Fundamental Mistakes in 5S: Part 2
2. Not putting Red Tag and doing 1S activity.
“It is like entering a hall without a ticket.” Many times organizations are in hurry to do 5S (I don’t know why?). So they just identify iterms that are not required in a perticular area and put it in Red Zone (separate area) without putting a “Red Tag”.
Now all items put in Red Tag does not necessarly to be scrappred. You need to take decition e.g. to
- Scrap / Dispose / Recycle
- Repair / Rework / Resuse
- Send to right location / Vendor
There are more than one agencies involved in this process:
- Those who put the Red Tag / decide 1s items.
- Those who take decision
- Those who acctually dispose the material.
You may be the person responsible for putting tag, but you need to make it easy for the person who takes decision and disposes the item. Also how will you keep track of how many items you have removed, if you do not put red tag.
Case 1: In one company after doing 1s activity, it was found that one very important items as lost. Upon investation it was found that that item was discarded during 1s activity. Management took it seriously and halted entire 5S activity. During such cases, if they had put a red tag, it would have been easier to take decision.
So next time you do 1s (Seiri) activity, please do not do it without putting Red Tag.
Keep Improving!
