🔧 Tool Management with Lean Thinking: Keep Your Gear in Its Groove

In tradie land, tools are your life—without them, work grinds to a halt. Lean thinking helps you cut waste, boost efficiency, and keep track of everything. Here’s how:

1. Start with 5S: Sort & Shine

Sort (Seiri): Remove unused or broken tools from your van and workspace. If you haven’t used something in 3 months, send it back to the workshop—or sell it.

Set In Order (Seiton): Assign each tool a home—labelled boxes, foam trays in drawers, or pegboards. Everything visible, reachable, and ready.

Shine (Seiso): Clean and inspect tools daily. It’s not just tidiness—it’s preventative maintenance. Found damage early? Fix it before it becomes a bigger problem.

2. Standard Work: Make Tool Handling a Habit

Define routine checks every morning and across shifts. Create a checklist—like "drill, impact driver, levels, chargers, PPE"—for pre-start routines. Schedule tool audits weekly. Make it part of the day.

3. Visual Management: Show, Don’t Tell

Use shadow boards, colour coding, or photo guides. Colour-coded tool trays show at a glance when something's missing. A photo of a "full" pegboard tells quickly if a tool’s gone AWOL.

4. Build a Tool Log (“Fleet Check”)

Use Fleet Check to:

• Log each tool’s serial, location, and user.

• Set reminders for calibration or service.

• Assign tools to team members confidently.

Integrate with Trello or Excel: Attach tool logs to specific tasks or jobs. This builds accountability on-site and in the workshop.

👉 Visit Fleet Check

5. Plan (PDCA Cycle): Check & Improve

• Plan: Identify a pain point—like losing drill batteries.

• Do: Assign a labelled charging station and weekly battery-check task.

• Check: Monitor misses or outages.

• Adjust: Update the system—maybe add daily checks or store spares onsite.

Bring your team each week to review what’s working—and fix what’s not.

6. Root Cause & Continuous Improvement

If a tool keeps disappearing:

• Ask “Why?” at least five times. (“A: It got left in a customer van → Why? Crew didn’t return it → Why? No return zone → Why? No system to flag missing tools → Why? We’ve never standardised tool returns.”)

Fix the root cause—implement a standard return zone or mascot tool checks—to stop the problem for good.

✅ Why Lean Tool Management Works

1. Less downtime as tools are always where you left them

2. Lower costs due to no lost replacements and fewer repairs

3. Happier team due to clear expectations, less stress & downtime

4. Safer workflows more productive with tools in good repair & accounted for.

🚀 Ready to Rig Up Better?

Lean isn’t complicated—it’s simply structured care for your tools. We’ll help you:

• Sort and set up a 5S tool hub

• Configure Fleet Check and/or 
Trello/Excel integrations

• Train your team on daily checks and make them a habit

• Build tool audits and PDCA updates

Get in touch to build a system that keeps your tools—and your business—on track.