5S is a commonly used lean tool in industry which provides a methodology for creating and maintaining clean, effective, organized, and safe work environment.
It aims to analyze the drawbacks in the existed system and eliminate those problems so that the workplace becomes well-ordered requiring less space, effort, time, and capital in operations . Although this principle is mostly used in workplaces like shop floor or office spaces, it can also be applied in home for improving personal standards, especially in kitchen where different operations occurred continuously.
What articles say about 5S?
Originated from Japanese housekeeping idea, 5S is a “useful environmental tool for organization management” (Kumar &Shivashankar, 2016). General belief states that by implementing 5S, an organization can make improvement in many aspects including clean workspace, increased free space, less waste in labor time, lower incident rate, better equipment reliability, transparent process flow, reduced cycle time and so on (Al-Aomar, 2011) The overall idea behind this principle can be summarized with a sentence by “Place for everything and everything in its place”. (Wilson, 2009)
5S philosophy is based on the idea that to create effective, safe, and sustainable work environment, an organization should monitor, plan and organize its activities to decrease wastes and achieve cleanliness, standardization and high quality.
Historical Background
5S is introduced in Japan, as a part of TPS, Toyota Production System, to continuously improve the operations by eliminating the wastes and deficiencies within workspace. In TPS, also called lean manufacturing, 5S is combined with many other operation tools like Kanban, jidoka, kaizen and so on. (Bicheno & Matthias, 2009) This lean manufacturing tool, 5S, can be considered as a base for the rest of the tools since without having convenient work environment producing in good qualities and improving that production is not easy. (Al-Aomar, 2011) However, with a systematically organized facility floor provided by 5S, it is easy to apply other tools since it offers safer work environment, higher quality, greater employee satisfaction, reduced costs, and increased productivity. Moreover, by looking at the “House of Lean”, originally developed at Toyota, the importance of 5S principles for the implementation of lean manufacturing can be demonstrated.
Steps of 5S
5S involves 5 steps: seiri (整理), seiton (整頓), seisō (清掃), seiketsu (清潔), and shitsuke (躾) which are usually translated as "Sort", "Set In order", "Shine", "Standardize" and "Sustain". Together, they provide a methodology for organizing, cleaning, developing, and sustaining a productive work environment.
1. Sort (Seiri): In general sorting refers to eliminating al unnecessary materials in the workplace and classifying the necessary ones together according to their functionality and priority. An evaluation of each tool, material, equipment etc. as necessary or not can provide a framework to decide which items should be eliminated so that more efficient work environment can be created. (Kumar et al., 2016 Sorting can be done by questioning the purpose, usage frequency and necessity of the item. This questioning helps to comprehend the value of each item which can be beneficial to decide whether it should be eliminated or placed from far away to not to take up space.
2. Set in Order (Seiton): After removing unnecessary items from workspace, it becomes easier to organize the remaining ones requiring evaluation of the items’ value. By evaluating the value of items, a comparison among items can be done to find the priorities and items can be set in order by using these priorities. In this phase one can ask the following questions to determine the value and relation of items to come up with logical solution: where would it be most efficient to place items, which items are used most frequently, which items are used in which workstation and so on. (Al-Aomar, 2011)
3. Shine (Seisō): This phase can be expressed as cleaning which means keeping workspace clean and tidy but also it includes performing regular maintenance on equipment and machinery, which can be expressed as inspecting workspace simultaneously [khan]. In this phase, one can also practice other S’s by putting the items in their correct place (Set in Order) and putting away the unnecessary ones (Sort) that he encountered while cleaning.
4. Standardize (Seiketsu): In this phase, the first 3S are systematized by assigning regular tasks, schedules, instructions so that orderliness become a habit within organization rather than one-time effort.
5. Sustain (Shitsuke): This phase is mainly about maintaining and updating the processes stated above smoothly. By doing this, it is aimed to make 5S long-term improvement and part of an organization’s culture.
Some organizations prefer to add one more S which is safety as 6th S which basically means to detect and eliminate risk factors in the work environment. However, some think if 5S is fully understood and implemented there would no need for checking safety.
REFERENCES
Bicheno, John, and Matthias Holweg. 2009. The Lean Toolbox, The Essential Guide to Lean Transformation. Production and Inventory Control, Systems and Industrial Engineering Books.
L. Wilson, How to Implement Lean Manufacturing. McGraw-Hill Professional, 2009
Raid A. Al-Aomar. 2011. “Applying 5S Lean Technology: An Infrastructure for Continuous Process Improvement.” International Scholary and Scientific Research & Innovation 5 (12): 2645–50. http://waset.org/publications/930
R.S Kadadevarmath Dushyanth Kumar K.R, G.S.Shivashankar,” Process Efficiency Improvement in Small Organization through Lean Supply Chain Approach”. International Journal of Business and Management18, no.6(2016).61-68.
T. Ohno,Toyota Production System. Free Press, 1998.