So why does 5S not sustain?

• Cultures that measure and put enormous pressure on the shop floor for labor efficiency and production volume - with no allowance or credit given for keeping things in order.
• 5S efforts that don't have any underlying purpose.  5S and all of the lean tools are improvement and problem solving devices.  What problem were you trying to solve by pursuing 5S?  People want and will readily use and sustain things that help them solve real problems.  More often than not the 5S effort didn't really help anyone solve any problem they really have.  More often than not, 5S is little more than monkey see-monkey do lean .... no real reason for doing it - just doing it because the lean book says 5S is good and someone said Toyota does it ... so we did it.
• How about an inherently unsustainable approach to 5S?  5S may well not have sustained because it just addressed the easy stuff - sweeping and sorting and yadda yadda yadda - but didn't cover all of the tough work that actually takes place in the work area ... maintaining the machine, changing it over, etc... or didn't really consider the quantities of material that flow in and out of the cell.
  
  Read more: http://www.evolvingexcellence.com/blog/2012/07/take-another-path.html#ixzz225Zu64Da
  at Evolving Excellence