Comments on: How clean is clean enough?

By: Observer

Observer — Sun, 12 Jul 2009 05:56:33 +0000

I once read in a Japanese article this true meaning. A shop floor is dirty. They do not notice a oil drum is leaking. When they start cleaning they find the leakage due to visibility of the oil slick. The solution at this stage is not cleaning of this oil spot, but to fix the oil leak.

In a messy place the ambient noise is high and hence you do not see the signal. Cleaning is a way of surfacing special cause variance above common cause variance by reducing the common cause variance.

By: Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog » Management Improvement Carnival #68

Thu, 02 Jul 2009 03:08:47 +0000

[...] How clean is clean enough? by Ron Pereira – “In other words, the true purpose of this step is to clean to inspect.” [...]

By: Mulyadi Ginanjar

Mulyadi Ginanjar — Wed, 01 Jul 2009 02:53:47 +0000

Ron, you have very good point of cleaning meaning. I will share it with my fellow suppliers, to refresh or remind them again about how clean is clean.
Currently I found they do cleaning, without understand what is the purpose of the activity itself. Last week I conducted 5S audit, almost all spot is clean, but they didn’t understand why it should be so clean.

By: Tim McMahon

Tim McMahon — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 23:49:47 +0000

Ron this is so right. I get this a lot with the introduction of TPM and autonomous maintenance. The act of cleaning is one of inspecting the equipment so as to catch leaks, corrosion, or other issues as early as possibly so as to prevent a catastrophic failure. The key or motivation is to prevent the mess so that everything stays in a production ready and process capable state all the time. This detection is the key to sustaining and continuous improvement.

By: Graeme Reeves

Graeme Reeves — Tue, 30 Jun 2009 13:24:43 +0000

I did just this after reading this yesterday. My mate was sweeping up and I asked him why the mess was there. After discussing it we realised the metal shavings were on the ground because the “catcher” was not working properly. A few hours later our maintenance team repaired the problem. No more sweeping. Brilliant!

By: John Hunter

John Hunter — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 19:51:36 +0000

Good post. I agree with you. The title reminded me of Dr. Deming’s point that you could not clean a table properly without knowing why. Do you need to use the table to do work? Do you need to clean the table to eat diner? Do you need to eat directly off the table? Do you need to perform surgery on the table. Clean enough depends on the purpose. For the table example it is often know but when workers don’t understand how the product of their work is used the system is not as good as it should be.

By: Mike Alderman

Mike Alderman — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 12:17:50 +0000

Ron, you bring up some very good points.. When I read this story it brings back some memories I always tell the people that I am training that “the best cleaning, is not need cleaning”! Meaning just what you said. Find and eliminate the causes of it getting dirty.. good point!