"Good afternoon , Suzuki San . I enjoyed the material on 5S that you gave last week . You said that you will give the Red tag format this week " said Miss P with expectations to learn more in her eyes .
Suzuki San smiled and said , " yes , I thought you will forget . I have asked my friend Mr.KJ to upload it in a drop box so that any one can download the excel sheet on red paper and can use . The link is at the end of the blog page he will publish .
As the name goes , if you are not able to get a red sheet , you can use any color though generally Red color paper is used , so its called as the red tag. Mr.KJ has offered to give a couple of pictures in his organisation where they have red tagged and then taken action .
You can see that the Kaizen team at Specialised Systems has spared no one , and has red tagged KJ's room as well . That is the beauty of Kaizen power , Miss P , the ability to accept constructive criticism and improve continuously .
Well , having said that , there are a few cardinal rules a Kaizen 5S team must know and follow " paused Suzuki San .
Miss P and her team , very eagerly kept looking at him wondering what he will tell next .
Suzuki San continued
" 1. You must be ruthless in your red tagging activity . Whatever is seen in a place without use for more than say 3 months , must be red tagged . Depending on the purpose , each company is free to decide this duration of non use , though .
2. You will notice that some of the inventory may be lying for years together , every one seeing it every day and doing nothing .
3. There was this company which had a successful red tag session happen , and then removed them due to an audit that was to happen , and again red tagged after the audit . This is not acceptable .
4. Yellow tag mess - A company decided to yellow tag , instead of red tag with the idea of those items as doubtful necessity , and when the exercise was completed , they found that all the items were yellow tagged . Moral is that there is no half way between red tagging and an item being doubtful of use . It should be mercilessly red tagged if not used .
5. Another company did a red tagging exercise and made adhesive red tag stickers at a cost of K 5 per sticker . One of the Kaizen members promptly red tagged the sticker bunch itself . Moral is that you must be very conservative in such a Kaizen exercise .
6. And last but not the least , my friends DO NOT RED TAG PEOPLE , UNLESS YOU WANT TO BE RED TAGGED YOURSELF "
Every one burst out laughing at this , and Miss P was almost on tears with joy hearing these inputs . " Suzuki San , We cant thank you enough for these valuable inputs . Now I begin to understand , what you meant by being Excellent by doing simple things in practice , WoW , this is great and we cant wait to implement "
Suzuki San said humbly " You are welcome , I am also asking KJ to publish in his blog a presentation that he gave to his staff on these rules of 5S and red tagging . But that will be next week , See you then "
RED TAG SAMPLE LINK AS EXPLAINED BY SUZUKI SAN :
This will open in a new window when you click Download at the right side top
https://www.dropbox.com/s/w9vrolvpuxznbgy/5S%20Red%20Tag%20template%20SSL.xls?dl=0
The Excel file has 3 red tag cards to fit an A4 sheet, and needs to be cut carefully to create 3 red tags .
Note 1 : The case study is developed by KJ and has no relevance
to any particular processes/situation that may be followed in the concerned industry
, All names are fictitious and do not represent any individual or organisation
. All mention are purely for illustration purpose of the central theme of the
case and are personal opinions unless cited and shall have no recourse of
consequences to author . Readers can use their practical inputs to alter any of the material that may be published . Readers are invited to express their views on this
continuing case study series .
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