Six Sigma Black Belt Quiz 14

The 5M’s—materials, machines, manpower, methods, and measurements—represent categories of process input variables.

5S Workplace Organization and Standardization is an LSS tool used to organize basic housekeeping activities and standardize materials, machinery, manpower, and methodologies used in your value-adding activities.

Waiting time waste may be caused by several sources. Some examples include materials conveyance delays, machinery or equipment breakdowns, operators working too fast or too slow, and an insufficient number of employees, to name a few. Causes of waiting waste include:

• Raw material outages
• Unbalanced scheduling or workloads
• Unplanned downtime for maintenance
• Poor equipment or facility layout
• Long process setup times
• Misuses of automation
• Upstream quality (flow) problems

Poor purchasing practices or purchasing measures can often lead to inadequate raw materials’ inventories.

Similarly with overproduction, unleveled scheduling and unbalanced workloads can both lead to the waste of waiting. These conditions typically occur in forecast-driven environments. In areas where the workload is not balanced properly between two or more process steps, one step will have excess capacity while the next may have excess demand

There are many possible causes for the waste of motion. Some of the major sources are:
•Poor people, materials, and machine effectiveness
•Inconsistent work methods
•Poor information management
•Unfavorable facility or cell layout
•Poor workplace organization and housekeeping

Transportation waste can be caused by a number of factors. The major causes are:
•Poor purchasing practices
•Large batch sizes and storage areas
•Inadequate facility layout
•Limited understanding of the process flow

The transition of information between employees, departments, and customers often leads to the waste of motion. Information management systems that are not set up to make required information available to employees when and where it’s needed often results in employees doing printouts and manual document transfers around the organization.

In every process there needs to be a thorough understanding of the materials, machines, man/woman power, or methods required to add value for the customer. A primary component of Lean—and a constant goal for LSS practitioners—is continued process development and deeper understanding of process knowledge.

There are a number of causes of underutilized employees or people waste. Each of these stems from some aspect of traditional belief systems.

Old guard thinking, politics, the business culture

Poor hiring practices

Low or no investment in training

Low-pay, high-turnover strategy