What does a 5S engagement cost, and why won't anyone quote you one?

Search for what a 5S engagement costs and you will find a lot of numbers with nothing behind them: a price per square foot, a flat day rate, a package price for "5S training." None of them can actually be true for your floor, because none of them have seen it. A consultant who prices your engagement before asking how many people are in the room, how many sites, and how many shifts you run is pricing a template, not your building.

Why "it depends" is the honest answer, not the dodge it sounds like

5S and 6S work is not a product with a price tag on the shelf. It is a service that scales with the real shape of the area: how many people have to be released from the floor for the event, how many buildings are involved, how much of the work can happen over video versus in person, and whether the standards get written in one language or two. Two engagements with exactly the same headcount can be very different weeks of work, and a rate card that ignores that difference is either padded to cover the expensive case or underpriced for it, guessing either way.

The nine things that actually move the number

On the Corporate Lean 6S engagement described on this site, no rate is published, and the scope is built from nine concrete answers instead of a guess:

• How many people are in the room. A kaizen event with six people on one cell and one with thirty across three shifts are different weeks of work, not the same week charged differently.
• How many sites. One building is one engagement. Four buildings is either four engagements or one plus a rollout, and those scope differently.
• How many areas or zones are in the baseline. The assessment is scoped by what actually gets walked, scored and photographed. One stockroom is not one plant.
• How much of it can happen on video. Assessment, standards writing and audit coaching all work remotely. The event days do not, because they happen where the work happens.
• Travel. Engagements are run from Boise, Idaho. Anywhere else, travel and lodging sit in the scope at cost, named before anything is agreed.
• Whether your trainers get trained. Teaching two or three of your own people to run the next event and hold the audit adds days, and it is usually the difference between a single improvement and a capability that outlasts the engagement.
• Who writes the standards. Written with your team costs more time in the room and holds far better. Written for your team is faster and decays faster. Both are real, legitimate choices, and a straight consultant will tell you which one your situation actually needs rather than defaulting to the cheaper one.
• How long the audit stays supported. The layered audit either becomes yours the day the engagement ends, or the consultant stays for a few audit cycles while the habit sets. That is scoped separately, so you can decline it without paying for it.
• Shifts, unions and language. An event that has to run once per shift runs more than once. If the floor does not work in English, the standards cannot either.

What a first engagement usually looks like

The usual shape is about four weeks, though the actual dates and scope are agreed in writing before anything starts. Week one is the assessment: two days walking and scoring every zone against a written baseline, with photographs, so the scope for everything after it is argued from data instead of a walkthrough nobody wrote down. Week two is the kaizen event itself, two or three consecutive days on the floor with the people who do the work. Week three is standards, a one page visual standard per zone with a named owner. Week four is the audit and handover, where the layered audit gets stood up and your own auditors run the first two rounds with the consultant watching rather than doing.

What raises the price, and what lowers it

More sites, more shifts, more travel, translation into a second language, and training your own trainers all add real days, because each one is real work, not markup. What lowers it is narrowing scope honestly: one area, one site, a shorter sustain period. Writing the standards for you instead of with you also lowers the price, but it is worth naming as a real tradeoff rather than a free discount: a standard your own team never had a hand in writing is one they are more likely to treat as somebody else's rule, and that is a large part of why it tends to decay faster.

The one number that should worry you

A quote that arrives before the nine questions above have been asked is not a quote about your floor. It is a guess wearing a decimal point, identical to what the next caller with a completely different headcount would receive. The honest version of "how much does this cost" is not a dollar figure at all. It is a written scope and a fixed fee, produced after someone has actually asked what is true about your building, and agreed before any work begins. If the scope changes once work is underway, the fee is re-agreed in writing before the work changes, not invoiced after the fact.

One more honest boundary, since it changes what any number would even buy: if what you actually need is a tidy floor before a visitor walks through, hiring cleaners costs less and does the job faster. A 5S or 6S engagement is for an area that needs to still be right next quarter, checked against a written standard, not for a one time clean.

Common questions

Why won't a 5S consultant just give me a flat rate?

Because a flat rate can only be honest for one specific shape of engagement, and no two floors have the same headcount, shift pattern, number of sites and language mix. A rate that ignores those differences is either padded to cover the expensive case or underpriced for it, and either way it is a guess rather than a quote about your building.

What actually determines the price of a Lean 6S or 5S engagement?

Nine things: how many people are in the kaizen event, how many sites, how many zones are in the baseline, how much of the work can happen over video versus in person, travel, whether your own trainers get trained, who writes the standards, how long the consultant stays for the audit, and whether shifts, unions or a second language multiply the event days.

How long does a first 5S or 6S engagement take?

About four weeks in the usual shape: a two day assessment, a two or three day kaizen event, a week to write and post the standards, and a week to stand up the audit and hand it to your own team. The actual dates and scope are agreed in writing before anything starts.

Can any of the work be done remotely to reduce the cost?

Yes, part of it. The assessment, the standards writing and the audit coaching can all happen over video. The kaizen event days cannot, because the work of sorting, straightening and inspecting a real area has to happen where the area actually is.

What happens if the scope changes partway through?

The fee is re-agreed in writing before the changed work starts, not added to an invoice afterwards. A scope built from nine real answers up front is what makes that renegotiation a small, specific conversation instead of a dispute.

Keep reading

• Why does a 5S program decay six months after the launch event?, the other half of this: what the missing sixth S actually is and what it costs to skip it
• Corporate Lean 6S, the full engagement this article describes, including the FAQ with the same nine cost drivers
• The free zone scoring sheet and layered audit template, the same instrument the assessment uses, no email required
• Philip Kling's record, twenty years installing continuous improvement systems, including the warehouse redesign that cut inventory and space requirements by eighty percent through 6S standardization