5S workshops nearly always go well.  Participants often start off a bit skeptical, thinking it to be another "housekeeping push" and end up excited proponents.

I've done one 5S workshop that didn't go well.  In fact, it was a disaster.  I conducted the workshop about, oh, eight or so years ago for a client that I didn't have for very long.  Thing was, I had conducted a 5S workshop in the same plant that had gone very well.

But that one had been on the shop floor and this one was in the warehouse.  I was a bit resistant when the client called about doing a 5S for the warehouse because I had never done on in a warehouse before and I didn't think there was a good fit between the 5S approach and reorganizing a warehouse.  (I'm not sure why I say that or if I'm right or not but I haven't run into any evidence to dissuade me of the idea.)

At one point, a team member called me "a college educated idiot".  I didn't think there was an upside in getting into a battle, verbal or otherwise with a even a bad hire of a client so I held my tongue.  But that gives you an idea of how badly the workshop went.

This sharp-tongued worker insisted that a bunch of corrugated sheets that were spilling off the shelves and scattered across the floor were "exactly where they needed to be" and refused to touch them.  (It was when I replied, "They either need to go back on the shelf whence they are falling or get thrown out but they are not staying on the floor.  And, since you won't help put them back on the shelf, I'm going to throw them out," that my educational status was besmirched.)  When I pointed to finished inventory that the company didn't make any more and for which an order had not been placed in years (small anvils), the team replied "So?  What's your point?  You're not suggesting we actually get rid of good product are you?"   When I suggested that faster moving inventory be moved where it could be reached with a shorter forklift trip, their response was, "Are you kidding?  Do you have any idea how difficult it would be to move this product up front?  What's the problem with running the forklift back here?"  You get my drift.

Since then I've pretty much refused to do warehouse 5S that wasn't limited to the office and the equipment.