What’s Your Definition of 5S?

For those who are not familiar with 5S, here’s a quick definition. 5S is more than a housekeeping program. 5S is an integral part of the Lean process. 5S is Sort, Straighten, Sweep, Schedule, and Sustain. 5S is simple in concept but it takes dedication and hard work to make it happen. 5S is the difference between ordinary and extraordinary companies.

What if They Did Not Use 5S?

If you doubt the importance of 5S, take a look around at folks who use it every day and consider what the implications would be if it did not exist. Let’s take a trip to the local firehouse. What’s the condition of the facility and equipment? Why is that? Can you imagine a fireman causing his crew to be late getting to the scene because he cannot find the keys to the truck? Or the equipment he needs to save a life is missing or needs repair.

OK, so you say it’s not likely that I will need the fire department, how about a trip to the dentist’s office. How are things kept there? Suppose the surroundings were dirty, how would you feel about the quality of the service provided? What if your dentist says, ‘Well I can’t find the tool I really need, I’ll use this instead and see if I can make it work’.

OK, OK, you haven’t been to the dentist in a while, let’s take a trip to your local home improvement retailer. You have a project you’re anxious to finish and, when you enter the store, you find it difficult to move through the store because of the inventory stacked in the aisles. Eventually, after walking through the store for thirty minutes, you find out that in the midst of all this stuff, the item you needed is in the backroom and it will take fifteen more minutes to get to it. You get the picture. And yet, many manufacturing companies try to operate under poor conditions repeating similar wasteful events many times each day.

A Dozen Reasons to Implement 5S

Since lists are popular today, how about these for reasons to implement 5S

12.	Improve quality
11.	Improve setup times
10.	Improve productivity
9.	Improve safety
8.	Reduce inventory and supply costs
7.	Recapture valuable floor space
6.	Contributes to “how we feel” about our product, our company, and ourselves
5.	Make your plant customer ready at all times.
4.	Help participants to see change as something positive and even fun.
3.	First step in implementing lean to make processes more visible and clean out the ‘trash’.
2.	You can achieve a competitive advantage.
	...and the number one reason to implement 5S is...
1.	It Can Be Done Today!

It’s Contagious! You can take it home with you

Remember, it was mentioned earlier about making both professional and personal resolutions. You can use 5S in your personal life as well. Something exciting happens during the 5S process and employees get motivated to improve their surroundings. Often, employees are known for taking their work home with them, so to speak. How many times have you looked for hours to find something you’ve misplaced in your home? Maybe it was the car keys, maybe it was a tool you needed, or maybe it was a list of reminders. A colleague recently confided that he no longer ‘cleans his garage’, he now 5S’s it. Once they understand the 5S process and what it can do, employees get motivated. They say, 'Yeah, we can do this, this is exciting’.

Getting Started

It’s not one of the 5S’s but maybe it should be. Starting is the first step in the 5S journey. Unfortunately, it is also the step usually not taken. Most companies never decide to start. The decision they make is to talk about starting, or to have meetings about starting, but they never start. That is, make the commitment that changes the culture, becomes real, and creates a new level of success. But you can decide that the New Year will usher in a sweeping change in your facility if you resolve to Start on 5S today.