Overcoming Resistance

You should anticipate resistance to a 5S implementation. 5S involves considerable change in how people go about their work. It is not so much about clutter and mess on people's desks. It has more to do with the discipline and clarity with which work is approached and organized. Clutter, or lack of it, is just a by-product. The fact that 5S is simple in concept does not help much with its acceptance; on the contrary, there may be skepticism as to how it can move mountains. Experience, however, shows that a 5S system prepares an enterprise for more ambitious, organization-wide interventions such as JIT and DFTS.

Hirano has identified 12 types of resistance to 5S (Table 10.2).^[4] You may add one or two of your own. As you can see, skepticism can come from a variety of sources, including senior executives. You must anticipate and handled these well for 5S to succeed. In a larger sense, this is a classic case of resistance to change (see Chapter 5).

Table 10.2. Twelve Types of Resistance to 5S Deployment^[4]

Resistance # 1:	"What's the big deal about Organization and Orderliness?"
Resistance # 2:	"You want me, the president, to be 5S chairman?"
Resistance # 3:	"Why clean up when it will soon get dirty again?"
Resistance # 4:	"Implementing Organization and Orderliness will not boost output?"
Resistance # 5:	"Why concern ourselves with such trivial matters?"
Resistance # 6:	"We already implemented them."
Resistance # 7:	"I know my filing system's a mess but I know my way around it."
Resistance # 8:	"We did 5S 20 years ago."
Resistance # 9:	"5S and improvement stuff is just for the factory."
Resistance # 10:	"We're too busy to spend time on Organization and Orderliness."
Resistance # 11:	"Why should anyone tell me what to do?"
Resistance # 12:	"We don't need 5S. We're making money, so let us do our work the way we want to."

Reprinted with permission from 5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace: The Sourcebook for 5S Implementation by Hiroyuki Hirano (English Translation Copyright © 1995 Productivity Press) www.productivitypress.com.