What we do in the heavy equipment industry, at its most fundamental level, is exceedingly simple: we solve customer problems. That’s it. The more problems you and your dealership solve, the more money you make.
Unfortunately, your team is severely restricted from solving these problems if your dealership struggles with the 3Cs of organizational rot: clutter, chaos, and confusion. And you can imagine this has an impact on all facets of your dealership: low profitability, poor employee engagement, and customers leaving you for your competitor down the road because their problems are solved faster there.
The solution can be profoundly simple: clean, organize, and maintain your dealership with 5S.
5S is a system for organizing workplaces and has been around for over 50 years. Developed by Henry Ford in 1926 and perfected during the industrialization of Japan post-WWII, 5S pops up in almost every industry worldwide.
Why such a broad impact? Because it’s simple and it works.
How do I know? Because I’ve practiced it in my dealerships, and now, with more than 50 implementations behind us at Sheppard & Co, we’re convinced more than ever that 5S is the first step to beating the 3C’s of organizational rot.
Here’s what 5S is.
5S is a workplace organization system that will help your dealership team get organized and keep it that way. When executed step by step for each area of your dealership, the benefits quickly follow.
A quick story to make the point.
I worked with a dealership in the Midwest last year where technicians were fed up with how long it took to find a tool in the toolroom. Not only were tools on the wrong shelf, but many were damaged, unsafe, or simply missing. That is if you could find anything at all because of the grit, grime, and dirt accumulated in the room after 30 years of poor management of the space.
The customer impact was as you’d expect. Extra time on work orders, delayed equipment turnaround, and not unexpectedly high rework due to the wrong tool being used for the job (don’t use a 5000 psi gauge to measure pilot pressure)!
Fast forward to today, and after 5S implementation, the difference in the tool room is night and day.
Here are the steps they followed:
1. Sort
The 5S team removed every item, and I mean everything, from the toolroom and put them into one of three piles: scrap, keep, and not sure (also called the red tag area). We’ll come back to this last category of not sure.
2. Shine
Everyone on the team, including the general manager and dealer principal, spent the better part of a day cleaning and scrubbing all surfaces, shelving, floors, parts, tools, etc. They painted the walls of the toolroom and installed a new door. Before moving on to the next step, they cleaned every item in the “keep” pile, and those items that required repair or calibration were set aside.
3. Set in Order
They returned the keep items to the toolroom. High-use items (sockets, torque wrenches) and consumables closest to the door, heavy tools (jack stands, mallets) on the bottom shelves, and similar items (hydraulic test hoses, OBD connectors) grouped together. Every item had a labelled home, first labelled temporarily with masking tape and then labelled permanently after a few weeks.
4. Standardize
One of the shop techs came up with this idea. He took a picture of the toolroom in its ideal state and posted it on the front of the new door with the statement: “Can’t find a tool? Put it back where you found it!”
5. Sustain
The service manager was adamant that there was no point in 5S’ing the tool room if they couldn’t keep it that way. So, he shifted his daily 5-minute meeting with his techs to the tool room to make the space visible and ensure everyone who used it had the same expectation to keep it clean and organized. Once a week, he’d go through the “not sure” pile to either scrap or keep the items.
So, did it work?
Absolutely. Tech frustration dropped, repair time improved, and rework came down. But even more importantly, 5S spread to the rest of the shop (by design – this is usually what happens).
If you struggle with the 3Cs of organizational rot – clutter, chaos, or confusion – with your toolroom, parts warehouse, or any area of your dealership, you need to implement 5S.
At Sheppard & Co, we’re so passionate about the positive impact 5S has on your team and customer experience that we’ve developed a system specifically for equipment dealers called 5Spark. Reach out today to learn more.
