5.4 Basic Lean Tools: Check Sheets

Next, imagine you are a manager in a distribution center.

One of your hourly worker’s jobs is to build pallets of cases or boxes. Each day they make pallet after pallet with 56 cases on it. Furthermore, the cases must be eight layers of seven each.

The cases are not exact cubes but close. So, it is easy to put seven per layer. But, while the task is simple, it’s very repetitive. At the same time, the employee must work with others within the DC to arrange the pickup of pallets to be moved to the shrink wrap machine.

Finally, the worker needs to count all the pallets and boxes that depart the DC each day to ensure the daily demand is met.

The above example is a straightforward task. But do you think you would do it perfectly every day? Or would you be like most of us and get sidetracked and lose count? This situation is an opportunity to apply our following quality/lean tool: Check sheets.

In its most basic form, a check sheet is a counting tool. It is designed to help us with repetitive counting to keep us from losing count when we get distracted. Think of the old count to five stick groups you’ve likely used (Figure 5.4). That is the basis of a check sheet. The check sheet builds upon this basic counting concept to allow us to collect valuable data for later analysis.

While counting is important, it becomes useless if we are counting the wrong things. Determining what to count is crucial to success. For example, our DC worker counts how many pallets ship or don’t ship during each of his shifts. These are numbers we’ll later need for analysis. Furthermore, it’s likely significant to know the reason(s) why a pallet did not.

Maybe the case count is off due to a loading issue, or the shrink wrapping was done improperly. There could be a host of other causes for the pallet to not ship: arrived late, damaged within the DC, wrong item for that shipment, etc. This type of data collection is a perfect use of a check sheet.

It contains areas or cells to collect the raw numbers for each category. The worker puts in which shift he is working and the date to allow us to gather specific information as needed. There is no rule that you must use sticks to count. You can see that he uses regular numbers when he does a large quick count. But, as he identifies pallets that did not ship, he adds a stick to the appropriate column. For example, if there were an incorrect number of cases on a pallet, he adds one to the “Wrong #” column. The same is true for improper shrink wraps or damage. There is even an “Other” column to add pallets that did not ship with a quick reason why not.

In summary, the check sheet is a simple, quick way to gather critical data. It is particularly beneficial in situations with repetitive tasks. Remember, the check sheet is adaptable to your needs; there is no exact format your organization’s check sheet must follow.