The user was me
Avant’s older paint-shop line had grown messy the way every busy workstation does: tools scattered, hundreds of hanging hooks and plugs without fixed places, rarely-needed spare parts in the middle of daily work. I knew this personally, because before my engineering studies I had spent four summers working that station. In 2021 I came back as a production engineer, and the assignment was to bring 5S, the lean workplace-organisation method, to the paint shops.
Knowing the work from the inside was a head start, not a shortcut. I knew, for example, that paint stuck to hanging plugs was both the biggest source of waste material and one of the biggest time sinks. But I wasn’t the one doing the job anymore, so I built the whole plan around asking the people who were.
A plan built on evidence and the operators’ say
I structured the redesign along the five 5S phases, and made three decisions I’d still defend today:
Sort by measured frequency, not by opinion. Every item was categorised by how often it was actually needed, from several times a day to a few times a year. For the uncertain cases I planned a simple experiment: tag the item, remove the tag when it gets used, and see how long the tags survive. Placement then followed frequency: the daily items closest to the workstation, the yearly ones to the far-end storage.
Ask the operators at every step. What should live where, how detailed should the labelling be, what storage solutions would actually help. The plan literally has “ask for their preferences” written into each phase. One early comment from an operator stuck with me, roughly: “at least someone is actually trying to directly improve our working conditions.”
Make it survive without me. Named and labelled locations for everything, a standard work sheet mapping the station, an audit form for regular self-assessment, working instructions, and a proposal to extend the newer paint shop’s maintenance plan to the old one. Organisation that lives in one person’s head isn’t organisation.
Working plan · five phases, three to four weeks per shop
The 5S plan on one page
The phases as the 2021 plan laid them out, with the decisions that shaped each. Operator input was written into the plan, not assumed.
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Sort Erottele
Every item categorised by how often the work actually needs it, from several times a day to a few times a year. Uncertain items enter the tag experiment instead of a debate.
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Simplify Yksinkertaista
Placement follows measured frequency: daily items within reach of the station, weekly nearby, the yearly ones to far-end storage.
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Clean Puhdista
The stations cleared and cleaned; what the mess had hidden, including maintenance needs, surfaces here.
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Systematise Systematisoi
A named, labelled location for every hook, plug, tool and chemical; storage solutions chosen with the operators, at the labelling detail they prefer.
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Standardise Standardoi
A standard work sheet mapping the station, an audit form for regular self-assessment, and working instructions, so the order survives any single person.
Placement by measured frequency
Uncertain how often something is used? Tag it. The tag comes off at first use, and the tags still hanging at the end argue for the far shelf.
The tag experiment: measuring behaviour before deciding placement.
Written into every phase: ask the operators what would actually help, from storage solutions to how detailed the labelling should be.
The pivot, and what shipped
Mid-project, priorities shifted: the newly built, larger paint shop needed sorting first, so I re-planned and executed a second, adapted version there before finishing the old line. Between the two stations, what shipped: cleared and re-placed storage with named locations for every hook, plug and chemical, a tool wall, box-and-rack systems for small parts, a mobile work table fitted to the new station’s measurements, and the documentation above.
Layout design · the hanging station, before and after
From “somewhere over there” to a named place for everything
Before · every frequency, everywhere
Daily tools, monthly fixtures and yearly spares shared the same shelves; finding things was part of the job.
After · zones step outward by frequency
Named locations, a tool wall by the station, and a mobile table fitted to the new shop’s measurements.
An honest ending
I never got to run the final evaluation step of my own plan. The other painter fell seriously ill, and I spent the rest of the summer filling in for him on the old line. There is a neat symmetry in ending the project back on the floor, though I won’t inflate it: the old shop was still only partly re-modelled, and most of what I had changed served the hanging-station operators rather than the painter whose job I was covering. My supervisor took over the remaining follow-through, and his feedback was about the thoroughness of the work, which I’ll take.
Years and a UX degree later, I can name what I was instinctively doing: contextual knowledge, co-design, measuring behaviour before deciding, designing for maintainability. 5S was my first service-design project; I just didn’t know the words yet.