When a spot is not cleaned or maintained somewhere in a company, or in your house, it probably means hidden problems. Why is it messy in the first place? Is it too difficult to clean? Are there too many leaks? Is there a problem that you have not been able to solve for years? Big problems can come from anywhere, especially from small issues that were hidden. The 5S methodology takes seriously every single issue, exposes it, and requires a solution to solve it, reduce it, or contain it. Expose complex issues is micro-step #8 in the 5S Your Life, the second one in the shine step, to achieve self-organization and stop procrastination.
If in doubt, report it out
Is there a process in place to report an issue in general? Let’s say you go to the bathroom in a restaurant, and you find it all messy and dirty. As a customer, would you report the mess? And as an employee? What is a rule of thumb? Would you clean it or just wait for the designated employee to do it? That’s part of the company culture, defined by the procedures and the employees’ behaviors.
Most of the restaurants don’t ask help from the customer during the experience. They only ask for feedback when the customer is leaving. Feedback should be as immediate as possible to be impactful. Some airports ask for feedback about restroom cleanliness by asking visitors to push one of two “face buttons” (happy, unhappy – see Image 22). If you decide to have an online reporting process, make sure someone is checking and acting upon to solve complaints; otherwise, nobody will care to use it again.
Identify and map the dirtiest places in your area
Another way to report issues is to “map” them. A map of dirty areas is a diagram showing the sub-section, to highlight the different areas that are in a constant battle with cleanliness.
The idea is to highlight these areas first, prioritize them and plan how to get rid of them, or at least reduce the impact, with the help of the next step #9, Avoid getting things dirty.
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