Being Religious with 5S and Standard Work

I got below article from Tuan Newlin for the “lean for your organization” contest. I was very impressed. When we talk about lean manufacturing and tools used with it like 5S we think about large factories offices etc. but we forget how much of time and effort these simple techniques can save in our day to day life. This implementation of 5S happens in a church to solve one of their day to day problems. Results are impressive. Thanks Tuan for sharing your story with us. Below is his article.

Working in children’s ministry at my church, Pine Hills Church , and seeing the waste that goes on behind the scenes made me want to act.

The areas of concern included storage, setup/breakdown procedures, and paperwork.

Our children’s ministry is held in our gym.

The storage room was filled, or at least looked filled, to capacity with who know what besides the sound, lighting and staging for our children’s program.

The procedure of setting up, tearing down and storage was different for each person and ran 60 minutes or more to set up and 45 minutes to break down.

Procedures for signing in, forms to fill out, security procedures and pick up were not documented and execution different each Sunday.

I sat down with the Youth Pastor and Coordinator and looked at the process. We came up with procedures, policies and paperwork that were thorough, flexible and clear. This led to reduced forms, consistent training, better security, and reduced floor space.

My next step was to tackle the storage area. The closet is a 20’ x 10’ room that was to be used for children’s ministry only. There were times that we could barely shut the doors after putting the equipment away.

Upon sorting, I found that it housed old props, broken toys, boxes of old costumes, and unused music equipment that were left over from when the gym was used temporarily for church service.

After 3 hours of sorting, setting in order and shinning, I set up a procedure to keep the closet maintained and created a layout of were all equipment is to be stored. I laid out a “red tag” area in one area of the closet for the youth pastor to decide disposition of the unused, broken or misc. stuff I found. I was able to free up 33% of the closet from these simple steps and should be 50% once the disposition of the “red tag” area is finished.

Lastly, the setup and teardown procedure needed organized. I asked the other helpers what are the minimal needs for setting up the audio/visual equipment? I then removed all the extra extension cords, audio wires, microphones and the like. I then made a procedure complete with a diagram of the gym. I organized the cords and cables together in a central location.

Through the application of lean principles we were able to achieve a reduction of setup time to 30 minutes (included putting up a stage), tear down of less than 20 minutes, storage room increase of 33%, an increase in training and execution proficiency, reduction in paperwork and overall consistency.