How to eliminate downtime in your workshop with Lean and 5S (and produce more without longer days)
29 June 2026 · 8 min read
In an industrial machinery workshop, much of the time isn't lost while repairing: it's lost between one repair and the next. Hunting for a tool, waiting on a spare part nobody ordered, redoing a job that was done wrong, moving a machine from one spot to another, or not knowing which order to pick up next. That time never gets invoiced, but you pay for it in hours, in delivery deadlines and in team stress. The good news is that almost all of that waste can be recovered without investing in machinery or extending the working day: all you need is a method. Lean and 5S are that method, adapted to the reality of a workshop rather than that of a large factory.
1. Measure first: how much time is really slipping away
You can't eliminate what you don't measure. Before touching anything, spend a couple of weeks noting where the time goes from the moment a machine comes in until it's delivered. The simplest approach is to compare the hours you actually invoice with the hours the workshop is open: the gap is your unproductive time, and it's usually bigger than you'd imagine. Write down the specific causes too -waiting on parts, looking for tools, rework, machine stoppages- because that's where the money is. Without this initial diagnosis you'll be working blind; with it, you'll know exactly what to tackle first and how much it's worth to fix.
2. Order and method with 5S: a place for everything
- Sort: get rid of whatever isn't used; clear benches and shelves of dead tools and material.
- Set in order: every tool at its point of use, labelled and within easy reach.
- Shine: a clean workstation reveals leaks, wear and faults before they stop the machine.
- Standardize: put in writing and in plain sight how each area should look.
- Sustain: a short, steady routine so it doesn't fall apart within a month.
3. Flow and layout: stop the machine going in circles
A machine that crosses the workshop four times during a single repair is eating up time that nobody invoices. The workshop layout -the layout- should follow the natural path of the work: reception, diagnosis, repair, testing and delivery, with no needless back and forth. Draw the real route of an order on a floor plan and you'll see the crossovers, the waits and the spots where machines pile up. Often it's enough to move the parts store closer to the assembly area, set up a fixed diagnosis zone or reserve a slot for jobs waiting on parts. Cutting movement is cutting downtime directly.
4. Standardized work: don't reinvent every repair
When each technician does the same job their own way, the result depends on who picks it up that day: different times, different quality and rework when something goes wrong. Standardized work means setting the best known way of carrying out the most common repairs and keeping it written and visible at the workstation: steps, tools needed, tightening torques, final checks. It's not bureaucracy or stripping away craft: it's stopping every order from starting from scratch and stopping mistakes from repeating. On top of that, standardizing is what lets you train a new technician faster and keeps the workshop's know-how from living only in one person's head.
5. Preventive maintenance: head off the stoppage before it arrives
The most expensive downtime is a machine that stops without warning in the middle of an urgent job. Preventive maintenance flips that logic: instead of waiting for something to break, you inspect and look after it on a schedule, just as you advise your own customers to do. Set a simple routine for your critical equipment -compressors, overhead crane, test benches, power tools- with scheduled inspections, lubrication and replacements, and keep a short history of each machine. A planned half-hour stop always costs less than a breakdown that knocks out a full day of production and throws all your committed deliveries off track.
6. Kaizen culture: small changes that stick
A one-off consultancy tidies the workshop for a month; what keeps it tidy is continuous improvement, Kaizen: the habit of spotting problems, proposing small improvements and checking whether they work, steadily and constantly. Nothing complicated is needed. A short five-minute meeting at the start of the day, a board where anyone can note down whatever makes them lose time, and a commitment to fix one small improvement each week are enough to keep progress from depending on anyone from outside. The key is for the team to take part: the best ideas for eliminating downtime usually come from whoever is in front of the machine every day.
Eliminating downtime isn't about working faster or pushing the team harder: it's about clearing away everything that gets in the way between one repair and the next. Measuring the unproductive time, organizing with 5S, improving the flow, standardizing, preventing breakdowns and sustaining the improvement with Kaizen are levers that reinforce one another and that, together, make your workshop produce more with the same resources and without longer days. If you'd like to know how many hours are slipping away today and where to start recovering them, we can help you see it in numbers.
Putting your processes in order is the essence of our innovation and process improvement service for workshops.