Home › Consulting › Corporate Lean 6S
Corporate Lean 6S · Nova Consulting
Workplace 6S, run on your floor and left working without us
One area, about four weeks, four things you keep: a scored baseline for every zone, a kaizen event with the people who do the work, a visual standard per zone with a named owner, and a layered audit your own team is trained to run.
This is the industrial method, not the household version of it. Sort, Straighten, Shine, Safety, Standardize, Sustain, run the way they are run in a plant: against a red-tag rule, at the point of use, with the standard posted where the work happens and an audit that produces a trend line rather than a feeling.
It is scoped per engagement. There is no published rate, because two engagements with the same headcount can be very different weeks of work. What determines the scope is set out below in nine items you can answer for yourself in about a minute. Send us those nine answers and you get a written scope and a fixed fee, not a brochure.
What the engagement is
Four parts, in this order, for one area
Each one produces something you keep. The order is not decoration: standards written before the sort is finished describe a mess, and an audit with no standard behind it scores an opinion.
Assessment
We walk the area with the people who work in it and produce a zone map, a scored 6S baseline for every zone, and photographs of the current state. Then we name where the time actually goes: searching, walking, waiting, rework, and anything standing on the safety line. You get the baseline in writing whether or not you go further, because a scope argued from a walk-through nobody wrote down is how these engagements go wrong.
Kaizen event
On the floor, with the people who do the work, not in a conference room. Sort runs against a red-tag area with a written disposition rule and a named person who can approve a skip. Straighten places what is left at the point of use and marks it. Shine is run as inspection, so cleaning finds the leak instead of hiding it. The area is different at the end of the week, and your team is the one that changed it.
Standards
One page per zone: a photograph of the correct state, what belongs there and how much, the named owner, the trigger that starts the reset, and the replenishment signal. Posted in the zone, not filed. A standard nobody can see from where they stand is a document, not a control.
Audit and sustain
A layered audit: the team leader checks daily or per shift, the supervisor weekly, the manager monthly, each against the same scoring sheet the baseline used, so the trend line is comparable to day one. We train your auditors and run the first two audits with them. This is the part most 5S programmes skip, and skipping it is why most 5S programmes get run twice.
Who it is for
- Operations, EHS, quality and facilities leaders who own a physical area and a budget.
- Manufacturing cells, warehouses and stockrooms, maintenance shops, service bays, labs, clinical supply and med rooms, commercial kitchens, and offices where shared physical work actually happens.
- Teams with an audit, a customer visit or a certification coming, who need the area to hold up and to keep holding up afterwards.
- Teams who ran 5S once, got a good week out of it, and watched it decay. That decay has a cause, and it is nearly always the missing sixth S.
- New lines, new buildings and relocations, where the standard is cheapest to set before anybody has developed a habit.
When we are the wrong call
- If what you need is a tidy-up before a visit, hire cleaners. It will cost less and we would be the wrong spend.
- If nobody with authority to approve disposal and to move equipment will be in the room, the event stalls on day one. We would rather say so now than invoice you for it.
- If the people who do the work cannot be released for the event days, there is no engagement. A standard written over their heads is one they will be right to ignore.
- If you want a certificate rather than a changed area, there are cheaper ways to get one.
A consultant who has never told you not to hire them has not been paying attention to your problem.
What changes
What your team holds at the end that it does not hold now
A number you can repeat
A 6S score per zone, taken before and after against the same sheet, and the photographs both were taken from. Your next audit is comparable to your first one, which is the only way anybody can tell whether this held.
A standard with a name on it
Every zone has a posted one-page standard, an owner, a reset trigger and a replenishment signal. Nobody has to remember the rule, because the area shows it.
People who can run the next one
Your auditors are trained and have run audits with us watching. If you never call us again the method still works, which is what the sixth S is for.
What is deliberately not promised here: a percentage. No figure for space recovered, time saved or defects avoided appears on this page, because we have not run this engagement for you and any number printed here would be somebody else’s result borrowed to sell you ours. The baseline in week one is what makes your own number measurable, and it is yours either way.
A first engagement
Week by week
This is the usual shape rather than a fixed product. The actual dates, scope and fee are agreed in writing before the first day.
Before we start
You pick one area, name one sponsor, and name the team. We agree in writing what is in scope, what the measure is, and what better will look like when we are done. Scope and fee are agreed here, before any work begins.
Week one
Assessment. We walk and score every zone in the area, photograph the current state, and write the baseline. You see the score before the event, so the after has something to be compared against.
Week two
The kaizen event. Two or three consecutive days on the floor with the team: Sort against the red-tag rule, Straighten to the point of use, Shine as inspection, and the safety pass that falls out of both.
Week three
Standards. Every zone gets its one-page visual standard, its owner and its reset trigger. Labels, shadow boards and floor marking go in. The area now tells you when it is wrong without anybody having to notice.
Week four
Audit and handover. The layered audit is stood up, your auditors are trained, and we run the first two audits alongside them. You keep the scoring sheet, the standards, the photographs and the baseline.
After
Either we come back for a few audit cycles while the habit sets, or we scope the next area, or you run it yourselves with what you now hold. All three are fine outcomes. Only one of them is more revenue for us, which is why it is worth saying out loud that it is not the default.
Your side of it
What you have to supply
None of it is unusual, and all of it is the difference between an engagement that holds and one that photographs well. It is listed before you buy rather than in a kickoff deck afterwards.
- A sponsor with authority. Somebody who can approve disposal, authorise moving equipment, and release people for the event days. Without that, the event becomes a meeting.
- The people who do the work. Released for the event days. This is the largest real cost of the engagement and it is usually larger than our fee. Better you hear it here than discover it in week two.
- One named area. Agreed before we start. The whole plant is not a first engagement, it is a programme, and it is scoped differently.
- A red-tag holding area, and somebody who can decide. Somewhere items can sit while their fate is settled, and a person who is allowed to settle it.
- Site access and safety induction. Whatever your visitor process, PPE and training requirements are, told to us up front, so the first morning is not spent in an induction room.
- A decision about photography. Standards work best with a photograph of the correct state. If your site does not allow cameras, say so at the start and we will use drawings instead. Nothing gets photographed that you have not agreed to.
- An owner for every standard. Named, before we leave. A standard with no owner decays, and we will say that at the time rather than let you find out a quarter later.
- A small materials budget, bought by you. Labels, tape, shadow board stock, bins. You buy them locally and we tell you what and how much. We do not mark up materials.
- Two hours of leadership time. One at the start to agree the measure, one at the end to walk the area and accept the standard. If leadership never walks it, the floor learns what the programme is worth.
Scope and fee
What determines the scope
Corporate Lean 6S is quoted per engagement and there is no published rate. That is not a negotiating position. It is that two engagements with the same headcount can be very different weeks of work, and these nine things are what move it.
- 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 in the baseline. The assessment is scoped by what gets walked, scored and photographed. One stockroom is not one plant.
- How much of it is on site. Assessment, standards writing and audit coaching all work over video. The event days do not; 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 you agree to anything.
- Whether we train your trainers. 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 an improvement and a capability.
- Who writes the standards. Written with your team costs more time in the room and holds far better. Written for you is faster and decays faster. Both are real choices, and we will tell you which one we think you need.
- How long we stay for sustain. The audit either becomes yours or it stops when we leave. Staying for a few audit cycles is what makes the difference, and it is scoped separately so you can decline 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.
You get a written scope and a fixed fee before any work starts, with what is excluded written down beside it. If the scope changes, the fee is re-agreed in writing before the work changes, not invoiced afterwards.
Who delivers it
Philip Kling
Lean Six Sigma Master Black Belt. Twenty years installing continuous improvement systems inside organizations, trading as Nova Consulting.
In 2007 he led a statewide operational redesign for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, taking a benefit process from thirty two days to under seven. In 2008 he became principal Lean Six Sigma consultant at McKinstry, where he ran a company-wide Lean transformation and trained more than two hundred people. Redesigning that warehouse as a flow-based system cut inventory and space requirements by eighty percent, and it did it through 6S standardization rather than more shelving. He then spent six years building continuous improvement systems at Amazon across a forty thousand person organization, training over a thousand people a year, and wrote Process Kaizen in 2012.
What you will not find on this page
No client logos. No testimonials. No case studies. No count of engagements delivered.
No corporate engagement has been sold through 6S Success, so every one of those would have to be invented, and a corporate buyer is exactly the reader who checks. The work described here is Phil’s own, delivered inside those organizations before 6S Success existed. It is a career record, not a client reference, and it is written that way on purpose.
If you want references before committing to anything, ask in your enquiry and you will get a straight answer about what can and cannot be provided.
Phil turns up himself. Capacity is one practitioner, so dates get agreed rather than assumed, and the person who scopes the work is the person on your floor.
Start here
Tell us enough to scope it
How this works, before you type anything. There is no ticket system behind this form. Pressing the button opens your own mail app with the message already written and addressed to support@6s-success.com. You press send there.
Phil reads it himself, usually within one working day. If your browser has no mail app attached, the same text appears in a box you can copy and send yourself. Nothing is stored on this site and nobody is added to a mailing list.
Put a date and time in the last field and a calendar invite for a one-hour scoping call comes back attached to the reply.
Would rather write it yourself? support@6s-success.com. Say which company, how many people, and what prompted it, and the first reply will be a question rather than a brochure.
See it before you buy it
The six S’s, what each one asks of a space, and the order that works. Free, and the same method the engagement runs.
Consulting for a house
A video walkthrough or a full day on site, for a home rather than a workplace. Both are priced openly.
How the method is written down
Fifty chapters and twenty room playbooks. A fair sample of how we write a standard, if you want to read before you talk.
Questions
Asked before, answered here
What does a Corporate Lean 6S engagement include?
Four parts: an assessment that scores and photographs every zone in the area, a kaizen event of two or three consecutive days on the floor with your team, a one-page visual standard for each zone with a named owner and a reset trigger, and a layered audit your own people are trained to run.
How much does it cost?
It is scoped per engagement and quoted in writing before any work starts. No rate is published, because the same headcount can be a very different piece of work. What moves it: how many people are in the room, how many sites, how many zones are in the baseline, how much is on site, travel, whether we train your trainers, who writes the standards, how long we stay for the audit, and whether the event has to run once per shift.
How long does a first engagement take?
About four weeks in the usual shape: assessment, then the event, then standards, then the audit handover. The event itself is two or three consecutive days. The actual dates and the scope are agreed in writing before anything starts.
What do we have to provide?
A sponsor who can approve disposal and release people, the people who actually do the work for the event days, one named area, a red-tag holding area, site access and safety induction, a decision about photography, an owner for every standard, a small materials budget you buy locally, and about two hours of leadership time.
Do you have client references or case studies?
Not for this offer. No corporate engagement has been sold through 6S Success, so any logo, testimonial or case study on this page would be invented. What is real is Phil Kling's own record: twenty years installing continuous improvement systems, a statewide process redesign for the Idaho Department of Health and Welfare, a company-wide Lean transformation at McKinstry, and six years building continuous improvement systems at Amazon. That record is set out in full on the About page.
Where do you deliver it?
Engagements are run from Boise, Idaho. On-site work anywhere else is possible with travel and lodging agreed in the scope at cost. The assessment, the standards writing and the audit coaching can all be done over video; the event days cannot, because they happen where the work happens.
Who actually turns up?
Phil Kling. This is not a bench of consultants with a partner on the cover, so the person who scopes the work is the person on your floor. That is the limit as much as the selling point: capacity is one practitioner, so dates are agreed rather than assumed.