3S: Sort, Sweep, Standardize | Lean Principles | Ryan Tierney
Welcome to Lean Made Simple, a podcast about transforming your business — and life — one step at a time.
In this episode, Ryan Tierney from Seating Matters discusses the 3S's: Sweep, Sort & Standardize.
Along the way, he and Producer Matt talk about:
Why clean and lean are NOT the same thing
The power of starting the day with an improvement mindset
What a digital 3S looks like
How to stop going around in circles and solve problems forever
Making standardising an easy and fun process
And how to start 3Sing in your organisation (heads-up: don't roll it all out at once!)
Check it out.
Links:
Book a Lean Made Simple Tour: https://www.leanmadesimple.com/book-a-tour
Send a voice message/question to the show: https://www.speakpipe.com/LeanMadeSimple
Welcome to Lean Made Simple: a podcast for people who want to change their business and their lives one step at a time. I’m Ryan Tierney from Seating Matters, a manufacturing company from Limavady, Northern Ireland that employs 60+ people. Almost ten years ago, I came across this thing called “lean” and it transformed my life… now I want to share this message with as many people as possible.
This podcast unpacks our learnings, lessons and principles developed over the last decade in a fun, conversational way that will hopefully empower you on your own business journey — whether you’ve been doing lean for years or are just starting out!
Check it out on YouTube, Spotify, Apple Podcasts or any other podcast platform by searching “lean made simple.”
Thanks and all the best.
— Ryan Tierney
Magic Moment 1: Decluttering Our Factory Transformed The Way We Work
Magic Moment 2: Start The Day With An Improvement Mindset
Magic Moment 3: Solve Your Business Problems Forever
Full Transcription of Episode
Ryan: Standardizing is anything that avoids you going back to the original problem.
The key to 3S is the third S, because without a standard, there's no basis for improvement.
Intro
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Ryan: Welcome to Lean Made Simple, a podcast for transforming your business one step at a time. My name is Ryan Tierney from a company called Seating Matters in Limavady in Northern Ireland.
I came across Lean eight and a half years ago and it totally transformed the way I think and the way that we operate in our business. And I'm really excited for the upcoming podcast.
Matt: Yeah, my name is Matthew Thompson. I'm a podcast producer that's been sucked into the lean vortex, and today we're going to talk all about 3S.
So Ryan, what on earth is 3S? Define it for us.
What is 3S?
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Ryan: Yeah, so anybody who's ever heard of lean before they've maybe heard of 5S, 6S, 7S. There's loads of S's, but it gets really complicated, and what we like to use is something called 3S.
So, very simply put, it's a workplace organization tool. That's kind of at a very basic level. It's how to streamline your, working environment and make it really organized. And this really ties into building, uh, a lean culture.
Matt: Cool. So, what, like, what are the 3Ss?
Ryan: Yeah, so 3Ss are Short, Sweep, and Standardize. Okay, so at a very basic level, the idea of lean is to add value to the customer.
So we want to focus on adding value to the customer and how we do that is to declutter our physical environment so that our mind is free to think and to work efficiently. So basically the first S is sort. We sort away all the stuff we don't need from our working ing environment, we get it away, out of the way.
We sweep, or clean, and then we standardize. So sort, sweep, standardize. And we're going to get into the detail now, but this is one of the most powerful tools to transform any organization.
It's something I'm really... Passionate about it and I can't wait to get into this episode.
Matt: Unreal. Well, let's do it.
Clean is not Lean
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Matt: One of the things that you said kind of pre recording is that a lot of people mistake lean for clean or, you know, cleaning is not leaning. There's like multiple variations of that. Could you unpack that a wee bit more?
Ryan: Exactly. Yeah. We do tours all the time. People come on a Lean Made Simple tour and a company came last week and they said, yeah, we do lean and clean time, you know, for the last 10 minutes of the day.
And I'm like, they don't get it yet. Lean isn't cleaning. People think Lean is keeping everything clean and organized. And that's not really what it is. Lean is about efficiency and adding value to the customer. So, we're not actually cleaning when we're sweeping the 2nd S. We're actually cleaning to inspect.
We're cleaning to uncover abnormalities. So, it's not a cleaning program. Lean isn't a cleaning program. Lean is a program to create efficiencies and add value to the customer, and one of the ways we do that is to 3S every single day with every person for an allocated time. And it's important that we do it in the morning before we start work.
And before, you know, we were doing this, and I heard of this concept where you stop before you work for 30 minutes every morning. I thought this was crazy. You know, how can we afford... To pay 30, 40, 50 people to stop for 30 minutes before they work, that doesn't make sense. Because you know, I was getting the calculator out and adding up all this time and it's a lot of time.
But the power of 3Sing, you know, the benefits of 3S in a far outweigh, the investment in time in the morning to do it.
Matt: Yeah, so when we come in here, we're brand new to 3S. And so you see these wee drawers here in the wide shot. You know, one of the jobs every day is to hoover, and you're hoovering. And at first I was like, why on earth am I hoovering every day?
This makes no sense. I could do this every other day, whatever, whatever. And then literally just a few days ago, I pulled the drawers back, and I was hoovering behind it, and I realised, oh those cables aren't really hanging properly. That might get pulled out. There's actually a defect there. Oh, I have an idea for an improvement.
Let's actually fix the cable and da da da da da da da. I think this might be what Ryan's talking about.
Ryan: Yes, and that's exactly it. So 3Sing allows us or gives us access into every corner of our facility. Because it encourages us to question everything. So if we're 3Sing the laser machine, for example, in the frame area.
We're 3Sing, but we're saying, there's a loose wire, there's a label that's hanging off. There's a leak. Why is there a leak? Oh, because the pipe's not tight. Let's get a plumber in to fix the pipe. So we're not cleaning. It's not a cleaning program. It's cleaning to inspect and uncover abnormalities. And the power of every single person 3Sing every day, that will change your company.
No doubt.
Matt: You said that it's important that you start the day 3Sing. Why can we not just, you know, as a team of three of us here, just 10 minutes at the end of the day do a quick hoover?
Why 3S should happen in the morning
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Ryan: Yeah, it's a brilliant question and the answer is really clear. We start the day with an improvement mindset. So, when everybody drives to work, they park their car in the car park, they walk in the door, they're not thinking about work or production, they're thinking about improvement. Because every single person at our company is a process engineer.
They're not paid to do the job, they're paid to improve the job. So it makes sense that we start the day with improvement. So we have an allocated 30 minutes after a morning meeting, where everybody goes around and does their 3Sing. Because the thinking is, right, what can I improve this morning?
And that thinking is carried forward into the entire working day. That, that's the power of 3Sing, first thing in the morning.
Matt: Crazy. And the thing that I think I'm hearing from you is that... If you start with a simple task, you know, like finding the cables and realizing, then if you come to actually do your work, you're already in that mentality.
We're like, oh, actually, I could improve this. And like, I've been looking at this, this jig for years and years. And now actually, because I've done that small improvement, it's almost like a little tiny domino that leads to a bigger domino and a bigger domino and a bigger domino. And then you're coming up with these mad improvements because you did something simple like hoover the floor.
Ryan: Exactly. We call that improvement momentum. Ooh. Yeah. And it happens all the time. It happened to me yesterday. Just before we started recording, I was showing you the improvements that I'd done yesterday. And I started with one, and then I thought, oh, I can improve this, and now I can improve this, and then you see something else.
It's improvement momentum. You just get into this way of thinking where you just want to improve everything. And that's what 3Sing in the morning does. It gets you started into that improvement mindset, and then you're just seeing things all day long.
Digital 3S
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Ryan: So you talk about like, doing it in every area of your factory.
One of the things that really stands out for most people when they come and do a Lean Made Simple tour, is that you guys have found a way to apply Lean into digital spaces. Yeah. So what does, what does a digital 3S look like?
Yeah, so a digital 3S is 3Sing your computer, for example. So your desktop. So, number one, sort. Sort out all the files. Delete all the stuff you don't need. Next one, sweep or clean. You know, you can't physically sweep a file on a desktop. But it's just thinking to organize and clean up the stuff you don't need. And then standardize. So make folders for specific documents, have them all organized, and the power of taking that time in the morning to do that, just frees up your mind for the rest of today.
You know, it's a really powerful concept.
Matt: Give me an example of standardising emails. So your email inbox, how would you standardize that? Yep,
Ryan: it's something, I don't get a lot of emails because I don't like email. I'd rather use WhatsApp, but if I get an email that I would like to unsubscribe to, I go to that website, unsubscribe to the email so that I never get it again.
So that's standardizing. So what's the problem? The problem is I'm getting all these emails. So how do I avoid going back to the original problem? I unsubscribe from that email list. So if we just stay with me here a minute, if we were sorting and swiping, if we were just sorting, we would delete the emails every day as they come in.
Wake up the next day, delete the ones you don't need. You're just keeping doing the same thing. But you're never getting anywhere.
The Most Important S: Standardizing
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Ryan: So I think we as a team, we're getting the sorting. That makes sense, okay, you look around, okay, there's nothing where it's not supposed to be. The sweeping, great, everything's nice and clean. Clean the tables, you know, mop the floor, blah, blah, blah. But the standardized bit?
Matt: I don't think we get it yet. So, help us.
Ryan: Yeah, well,
we had a tour from a company, Vallourec Tube Alloy from Texas and the guy who was on the tour, Alex Ramirez, he came to see us and he told me a definition of standardizing that I've never forgot.
It's internalized, it's in my head. He said standardizing is anything that avoids you going back to the original problem. So I'm just going to say it again so that people listening to this can internalize it. Standardizing is anything that avoids you going back to the original problem. So if we think about...
I'm tidying up the physical factory and there's a brush lying in the corner. So if I make a hook on the wall for that brush, that's the standard location. So what was the problem? The brush was... every time I went to look for it, I couldn't find it. So now we've standardized it to avoid us going back to the original problem.
If I can't find the drill at my workstation and I make a holder for it, that's standardizing. We're not going back to the original problem. We've fixed it. So, the key to 3S is the third S, standardizing. Because without a standard, we're not getting better. There's no basis for improvement.
Matt: Okay, so like, if I workshop this slightly, so, I'm walking around the office and I trip over the hoover.
And then I sort the hoover, so I put the hoover away, and then I sweep the hoover, I clean the hoover. But you're telling me the standard would be now creating a place where the hoover always goes so no one ever trips over the hoover again.
Ryan: Exactly. So... Makes sense. The original problem was you tripped over the hoover.
Yeah. So we're going to standardise that, we're going to make a dedicated location, hang it up on the wall, put markers on the floor for exactly where it goes. And just, just think for a minute, if every single person in your organisation standardised even one thing a week. Never mind one thing a day, one thing a week.
Your company just gets better. It just, it has
to get better.
Matt: So you're solving the problems forever, basically?
Ryan: Yes, exactly, yeah. Wow.
Making it easy to standardize
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Matt: Have you found in your experience of doing 3S, because you've, you guys have been doing it for nearly a decade. How do you encourage people to get over the obstacle of going for the third S? Because the first two S's are easy, bam, bam, you get the quick dopamine hit. But like, it's, it's.
It's hard to do the 3S?
Ryan: It is, and I'll, I'll be the first one to admit that. It is hard. Sorting is easy. We can lift stuff that we don't need and get rid of it. Cleaning is relatively easy. But standardizing is difficult because it means you're having to physically, like, think of how do I hang this on the wall, or how do I create this folder, or you know, you're having to be really creative.
So one of the things we've got really good at, at our company is improving the process of standardizing. It's really easy to standardize. So we've got a standardized bracket for hooking the brush and shovel on the wall. We've got a standardized bracket for the WD 40 holder, an aerosol can holder. We've a standardized pen holder if you want to standard, create a standard for where your pen goes in your desk.
We've got a standardized part, you know, on the shelf that we can go and get at any minute of any day. So we've made the process of standardizing really easy. So that everybody feels empowered to do it. And if the process is easy, there's more chance of them doing it. The other thing we've done is that we have one or two dedicated people that are standardizing experts.
They're the go to person if you want a bracket made or you want a shelf put up or you want a holder for something. We have a dedicated person that can do that because it's so important that we follow through and do the third S which is standardize.
Our job as lean leaders, is to improve the process of making improvements. So my job isn't to make improvements, although I do, my job is to improve the process of making improvements.
All I'm really doing is providing the fertile soil for the seed to grow. You know, that's all I'm doing as a leader and that's all any lean leader should be doing is providing the soil, the fertile soil for the seed to grow. So by making the process of standardizing really easy. That, that's, that's what we're doing.
Real-time 3S of a messy drawer
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Matt: Mad. See why we're tearing the studio apart? Yeah. I'm gonna throw, I'm gonna throw ourselves and the producers under the bus as well because we'll have to be a bit creative how we do this. Can you grab that top left drawer and have a hoke through it and basically 3S, coach us, so critique us. And so it's a big cable of, uh, or it's a big drawer full of cables.
These are all audio cables, and they're a mess. So, Ryan, over to you.
Ryan: Yeah, brilliant example, actually. It's, it's, it's, it's how we teach 3S at our company, is that we physically get something and show, you know, this is an example of 3S.
Matt: So hang on, let me show it to the camera... It's a mess.
Ryan: So if I was to 3S this box of cables... The first thing, so sort, I would sort out any I don't need.
You might say, I don't know, you know, this is probably your job to do, but because I don't know what these are used for.
Matt: So we don't, we probably need half of those cables. Right. Perfect.
They're backups. We're like, oh, well, keep them just in case.
Ryan: Yeah. So I would sort the ones I would say, okay, we don't need that. We never use that. Get rid of them. Sell them off. Give them away. You know, just get, declutter them. They have to be out of the working environment. Yeah. The next thing is sweep.
And this seems silly. Like, why would I sweep or clean these cables? They're already clean.
But it's cleaning to inspect. You're looking at them going, are the fittings okay? Is the plug on the end? Is the wire loose? Oh yeah, it is. That needs tightened up. There's a loose one. We'll have to get a new one of them.
So that's sweep. So it's not cleaning. It's cleaning to inspect. Or cleaning to uncover abnormalities.
And then the third S, which is the most difficult, is standardize. So if this was me, I would divide this box into like 10 different locations. I would have a dedicated place for each cable. I'd put a label on saying this is a 5 meter this is a 10 meter, whatever.
So standardizing. So what's the problem? We can't find the cables. So standardizing is anything that avoids you going back to the original problem. So we've standardized the place for the cable. So that isn't a problem ever again.
Matt: Yeah, so I can already see how beneficial this is, right?
if you were to tell me, oh quick, I need a 5 meter cable, I'd be like, let me bring all the cables out and hoke through them and line them up and it would be, it would be carnage.
Ryan: And think of the power of what we're doing.
We have 60 people doing things like that every day. So when a customer says, because this is all about adding value to the customer, the customer says, I need a product and I need it delivered quick, and we're like, yep, game on. Because we know where everything is. We've got the supplies we need. We've got the tools we need.
And we can respond to that customer really efficiently and really quickly. Yeah.
Creating a Weekly 3S Schedule
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Matt: Crazy. So talk to me, at the Lean Summit, when we were all, all... How many people was it?
Ryan: Uh, 220, yeah.
Matt: All 200 of us were going round the factory in sync. Multiple different stations, 10 stations at the one time. It's incredible. I saw loads of things on the wall.
It was actually my one takeaway from the whole summit. I have photos of it, of a weekly 3S schedule. Talk to me about that.
Ryan: Yeah, good point. One thing that I don't recommend, if somebody is listening to this podcast, I do not recommend that you go back to your company tomorrow, and assign every single person 30 minutes of 3S, because it'll be absolute chaos. Because we done it, and it didn't work.
Matt: Is it just like hoovers flying everywhere, or like what does it look like? It's just, it's just... dettol wipes, just like exploding.
Ryan: Yeah, because people see it as a cleaning program, right? Everybody just, they're going around cleaning everything they can see, and it's actually a wasteful process.
So I don't recommend that at all. What I do recommend is teaching and training your people on 3S and training them on exactly how to 3S and then assigning one or two people at a time until eventually everybody in the company understands this concept. One of the things that we found early on in our Lean journey was that it was just a free for all.
People were just going on 3S and what they thought was right. We were maybe 3Sing the same area four times in a week when something else over here was forgot about. So now every single person in our company has a 3S weekly schedule. So on a Monday, we're 3Sing the desktop and the computer. On the Tuesday, we're 3Sing the entrance hall at the reception.
On a Wednesday, we're 3Sing around the compressor area. You know, different areas. So every single person... Has a dedicated 3S schedule and it keeps the whole thing really organized and really structured.
How to get started with 3S
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Ryan: Unreal.
Matt: How do we get started? Someone's just stumbled across this video, they've typed 3S in, and they've listened to this.
Where do we go from here?
Ryan: When we started Lean eight years ago, we'd done like a massive 3S. We got rid of three 40 foot loads of stuff. There was shelving, old desks, old office chairs, filing cabinets, all the stuff that had been sitting around our company for years just decluttering the place. And the release, I still remember those, those trucks driving out the gate with all the stuff.
We just sold it all off and got rid of stuff. The release and the relief that I felt when we got rid of all that stuff, there's just like a, just like an air of simplicity around the place, you know, there's like a load lifted off your shoulders. And now when you walk into our factory, the floors are clean, the walls are white, it's really simple, it's really clean.
And we've decluttered all the stuff so we can focus on, focus on our work.
Matt: 100%. And that relieves almost like a cognitive load. Like in a, almost physical, like, I remember I shared with you before, a long, long time ago, we used to work with hoarders. And so people whose houses were the opposite of what we're talking about.
And people's lives would transform whenever they actually would get rid of some of these things they were holding on to. And I meant to talk to you about it before. You ever read the Marie Kondo book? I think she's Japanese. The Magical Power of Tidying Up, like something like that. And I buy into that, man.
Like, it genuinely, like, a lot of times on the show, you've talked about how Lean frees up the mind. And this sort of 3S stuff, I think, really frees up the mind and frees up the physical space, frees up the mental space, the digital space. It's awesome.
Ryan: Yeah, it really is. Even at home, I've got a drawer, you know, in the bathroom.
It's all in Kaizen foam, a toothbrush, a toothpaste, you know, it's all, it's all really well dialed in and really organized and it's such a relief. Every morning I open that drawer, it's just like, you just smile when you see it. It just makes your day, it's a really good start to the day, knowing that there's clarity, you know, first thing in the morning.
So even before 3S time when I go to work, I'm seeing that clarity, you know, in the morning when I wake up.
So what could you do after this podcast? The next drawer you go to, open the drawer, the stationary drawer in your, in your office or the drawer where all your batteries and all your clutter is at home. The junk drawer. Everybody has one of those drawers and just do a small scale 3S just to see the power of it.
Sort out all the stuff you don't need. Sweep, take all the stuff out, clean it, sweep it all, and then standardise, say this is the box for the batteries, this is where I'm going to put all the pens, this is where I'm going to put the phone chargers, and just think about the feeling you get when you do that.
I guarantee you'll get hooked on this because you just want to keep doing more and more and more. You'll do it at home and then you'll apply it to your work and then you're a Lean Maniac.
3S reveals how much somebody understands lean
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Ryan: You said something mad just before we started, and maybe it would be a good place to close. You said the level of 3S shows how much somebody actually gets lean. Yeah. What does that mean?
So, I get invited to companies all the time to help them with lean. Um, and as soon as I walk in, I can just tell, alright, I can tell the level of engagement that they're at by the level of their 3S. So... Everybody knows Paddy. He works at Seating Matters. He's famous now.
Matt: The man who does the work of six men.
Ryan: So Paddy is an absolute lean maniac. He totally gets it. So if you walk into Paddy's area, and you see Paddy's area, Paddy does the wood. He works in the wood department. There is no sawdust on the floor. His workstation is absolutely immaculate. Every single tool is dialed in. It's almost like a showroom.
It doesn't look like a working factory. It's almost like a, like a, like a fake showroom that's been set up. People don't believe that there's any work happening there. Paddy's level of 3S is a reflection of how much he internalizes lean. Right. Um, I might go to a factory and some areas are really good and some areas are at a different level.
And it's just people at different stages on their lean journey. And the more you internalize Lean, the more you get the stuff, the sharper your 3S becomes. And it just shows engagement. So if we have a new person that's started, they've only been with us two to three weeks, their 3Sing isn't at the level of other people, and that's okay, because it's a journey.
But now you're, it's 100 percent right. Your physical appearance shows what's going on internally. Wow.
Outro
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Ryan: Well, if you'd like to come and see Paddy's showroom, as I'm going to refer to it from now on. Uh, in a Lean Made Simple tour in Limavady in Northern Ireland in, uh, Ryan's factory with the team of Seating Matters.
Highly, highly recommend checking it out. There's a link in the description for you to book that for yourself and your team. It's what kickstarted our Lean journey. And, uh, we describe Seating Matters as like a living Lean metaphor. And it allows you to internalise these things and take it back to your business, whether it's a podcast business or a carpentry business or whatever.
Uh, and so, Ryan. I loved today. Today was great. I know we broke format and took a bit of a risk, but I thoroughly enjoyed it and I really appreciate all the, all the, um, even all the advice you gave us
today. So thank you. Thank you. Just another note, maybe on the tours, we're actually building a team to host more lean tours because the amount of tours we're getting is just, it's crazy.
I think I was telling Mark earlier, I think like 40 or 50 people booked in for a tour this week. So we're actually building. Developing a new team to host Lean Tours. Because the interest in Lean, I don't know what happened, but the interest in Lean over the past 6 months to a year is just through the roof.
So, we used to have a really long waiting list for tours, like we're 5 or 6 months out. We're in the middle of building a team to be able to do more tours and get more people through the door to share this message with as many people as we can.