Hello and welcome back!  Before I blog-on today, I must add a quick note about the Bathroom Cabinet blog.  I mentioned that when you are sorting out your makeup, to remove the brushes.  Did anyone wonder why?  It was to shine them as well…  It only takes a few minutes to give them a wash and you will find that they work much better – especially those little eye-shadow foam ended applicators.  I use a mild soap – the Neutrogena hypoallergenic is great and rinses out very easily – and just wash and rinse in warm water until they are clean.  Then lay them out on a handtowel in the sun to dry.

Okay – lunches.  Firstly the rationale…  What could you do for yourself if you had an extra 20 minutes plus each morning?  Well, that is what I am told that most of us spend making lunches for the family every morning.  One of the great outcomes of applying Lean theories is that you achieve capacity release.  Releasing additional capacity in a workplace means that people spend less time doing routine things and more time doing things that add value for the customer.  Well, guess what?  YOU are my customers.

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Ok, so let’s get started. First up, let’s think about what we are trying to achieve… Room to Organize. Getting organized. Making things work more easily and with less effort. Fixing things so that they stay that way. I’m going to practice what I preach here and start with a small project which will give you a good start while demonstrating the concepts of what we are about. Let’s think about the smallest place in the house – the bathroom.

First the theory. One of the Lean tools that I talked about in my introduction is 5S. 5S is a reference to a set of five words which start with the letter S and are each a stage of the methodology. 5S is a method for organising a workplace, especially a shared workplace such as an office space, and keeping it organised – and come to think of it, isn’t a home a kind of a ‘shared workplace’?. The assertion of 5S is that by assigning everything a location, time is not wasted by looking for things. Other key targets of 5S are workplace morale, team work and efficiency. Different organizations use different versions of the 5S words, but I am going to introduce them to you as Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardise, Sustain.

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