Steve King has 33 years experience in the construction industry. He’s worked just about every role from field foreman, to electrical contractor, all the way up to Director of Prefab and Manufacturing. King now leads product development at EVOLVE, helping to build software that makes managing a prefab shop easier than ever before.

King hosted a webinar with EVOLVE titled “A Beginner’s Guide to Finding Prefab Success with Lean Principles”. To help educate prefab leaders and teams on how they can implement lean principles with their shop. We’ve summarized that webinar for you here in this blog. Read on for a lesson in lean principles and how they can improve your prefabrication process.

Prefabrication Shop Management or 5S

As King explains, “Your fab shop is not a jobsite in an offsite building…it is a manufacturing facility that must use manufacturing principles, methods and techniques to become highly productive.” One of these methods is the 5S’s. The 5S’s are the foundations that create an effective lean manufacturing process. They are: Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain.

“But it isn’t just about cleanliness in the workplace.” King tells us. “When a  shop is unorganized it’s unworkable and unsafe. You cannot be productive or efficient in that kind of environment.” Let’s examine each step of the 5S’s.

Sort

King kicks off by telling us that, “The reality of sorting is to get rid of everything that doesn't belong in that space. If it's not being used there it doesn't belong there - period.” Unnecessary clutter leads to missing materials, crowded and dangerous work spaces. “People will say ‘Well we're just storing it there for a week’ or ‘It's always been there so we're not going to move it.’, Well move it because it ain't going to stay there any more!”

Set in Order

Every single item in your shop needs a designated space where it lives, or as King says “A place for everything and everything in its place.” If everything has a place you can find it when you need it, and you know exactly where to return it to. Make sure to organize in a way that most things are easily visible and accessible. So long as this is upheld teams can maintain a well-organized shop.

Shine

This stage acts as a quality control. Clean your workspace or work cell before the end of every day. Now that you have designated spaces for every tool or material make sure everything is returned back to its proper space at the end of the day. Be thorough when cleaning and do not skip this step!

Standardize

“Standardization is starting to figure out what we want and how we achieve that goal," says King. In a fab shop, one of the first things you can do to standardize your prefab process is to create a well-laid out shop floor. “When we laid out our shop, we determined where all the work cells were going to be, and took into account not just production workspaces but it also took into consideration safety, aisleways. We accounted for traffic, routing for forklifts and trucks, as well as the storage of everything in the facility.”

Steve tells us how his team defined those with these colored markings on the floor and on a weekly basis would check to ensure the markings were in place. Shop leaders in each work cell would mop these lines to keep them clean and they would repair them when they got damaged. “It is a way of starting to change the culture in the facility.” Steve tells us. There are many ways to standardize the different processes and variables in your prefabrication shop. Determine your goal, then establish and implement the process that will get you there.

Sustain

“If you don't have the ability to sustain everything you've done up to this point, it will fall apart fast. It'll be gone as soon as you blink an eye.” Steve King cautions. 5S is meant to be a way of life. It is not something you can do occasionally if you want to see the benefits. 5S requires a culture shift. You need everyone on board, and turn the 5S’s into habits that are practiced everyday. If you can get your team members to buy in and adhere to your new organizational practices, you’ll see the benefits of working lean with the 5S’s.

The 5S methodology Steve King advocates—Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain—provides a roadmap for transforming prefabrication processes into efficient and productive endeavors. By implementing these principles, prefabrication shops can create safer, cleaner, and more organized workspaces, ultimately leading to improved morale, reduced costs, and increased productivity. As King emphasizes, embracing the 5S's requires a cultural shift and ongoing commitment from all team members. With dedication and persistence, the benefits of lean manufacturing principles can be fully realized, revolutionizing the prefab industry and paving the way for continued success.