Do You Cleanup-After-Crisis

Would you like your purse to be transparent?

Answer from some people may be a Big-NO with exceptions of course. Reason is obvious if you look at the picture.

Anyway, transparent containers are usually preferred to opaque ones. Like for instance transparent glass bottles  usually used in a typical kitchen. They are also used in some industries like processed-foods, pharmaceuticals, etc.

Why do people prefer transparent containers?

Obviously because contents therein can  be easily seen even from a distance just by a single look. You may call this as a step towards look-free²-engineering in order to reduce number of glances or looks (as required in ergonomics) thereby reducing search-time.

In fact, making or rather more appropriately 'designing' a workplace¹ to be transparent (alongwith systematic arrangement of equipment therein) is a principle practised in Seiton-pillar of Five-S. It makes the workplace¹ search-free² as well. Five-S is a Kaizen-tool to make improvements proactively.

Is it so important?

Apart from making the workplace¹ look-free², search-free², etc. there is also a 'not-so-obvious' reason behind the practice of 'transparency' principle. 

Transparency makes abnormalities, if any, obvious and visible. Look at the purse again if you don't believe this. Had it been opaque, you couldn't have noticed 'defects' inside: Be it chaotic (lack of systematic) arrangement or a sharp object inside it causing injury to  finger or a leaky-pen messing up other items.

An opaque container on the other hand hides defects behind it. Imagine a stock-out situation resulting due to invisibility of say grain-stock attacked by pests inside it. Or imagine a situation when a  pendrive containing  important information couldn't be fetched just-in-time (JIT) when 'need'ed in spite of it being in the purse. 

Or imagine a loose connection inside an opaque computer-cabinet or in an opaque (closed) electrical control room the spark of which resulted in a devastating fire. Realizing this, leading businesses have already begun marketing transparent-cases of their offerings as a differentiating proposition.

So the later one i.e. to make 'defects visible' is more important subtle-reason of designing a workplace to be 'transparent' than the former one i.e. to improve 'visibility-of-contents' itself.

Ways-and-means to make a Gemba transparent

Ways-and-means could be many. Some are as follows.

1/ Use of a transparent glass or plastic (for a container or for a cabin partition or as an enclosure of a product).
2/ A simple daily-cleanup (of a desk or a house) like done in Seiri-pillar of Five-S by getting rid of items unused (lying idle) over a given time period.
3/ An advanced daily-cleanup like a mother bathing a child or a workplace practising Seiso-pillar of Five-S that exposes cracks, crevices, etc. as defects.
4/ Seiton-pillar of Five-S: A systematic arrangement of routinely used items, consumables, tools, tackles, etc. using space vertically (rather than spreading the items horizontally) so that more can be stored close to point-of-use in an arm's reach.
5/ A system-based method such as an RTI-Act to make governance visibly transparent and thereby to unearth corruption as 'defect' in governance

What is the learning?

Taking it a little ahead, making a Gemba transparent is the desired result. Choice of ways-and-means to do so lies with the user. However, there is 'no-choice' at all not-to-do-it.

Otherwise ensuing crises as a result of not doing it do force one to do it reactively though. History has enough proof of this and costly at that. Causes pushed under the carpet do boomerang (raise their heads) in the form of crises exactly when we don't want them! 

Look at the forced-cleanups as in (rape-fame Shakti-mills compound) picture that had to be undertaken reactively after experiencing costly-consequences.

"History never really says gogoodbye. History says, 'See you later'", as Eduard, Galeano, Uruguyan writer and historian, says unless of course you work on root causes. 

So better to 'Cleanup-Before-Crisis'! Better to be proactive!!

Footnote-1, Workplace is called as Gemba in Japanese language in the context of doing Gemba-Kaizen for workplace improvement-management.

Footnote-2, These are Free-Engineering concepts to make a workplace free of, say, a non-value-activity (waste) like searching or looking or unscrewing, walking, etc.

Also read a few relevant blogposts hereunder: Please do consider leaving a comment or sharing this post via social media.

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