What is 5s? Benefits of 5s? How to implement 5s?

What is 5s? Benefits of 5s? How to implement 5s? 5s is designed to decrease waste while optimizing productivity through maintaining an orderly workspace and using visual cues to attain more consistent operational results.

What is 5s? Benefits of 5s? How to implement 5s?

You may also know 5s as the 5 pillars of a visual workspace. 5s is the name of the workplace organization method that uses a list of five Japanese words: seiri, seiton, seiso, seiketsu, and shitsuke.

What is 5s? Benefits of 5s? How to implement 5s?

Key Benefits of the 5s implementation?

1. 1. Increase productivity

2. 2. Improved Safety

3. 3. Reduce waste

4. 4. Worker Commitment

Step 1 Sort: 

Step 1 Sort: 

The first step of 5s, sort, involves going through all the tools, furniture, material, equipment, etc. In work, area to determine what needs to be present and which can be removed from the workspace. 

While deciding this, we need to ask a few sets of questions.

Question 1: What is the purpose of this item?

Question 2: When was this item last used?

Question 3: How frequently is it used?

Question 4: Who uses it?

Question 5: Does it really needs to be here?

These questions help determine the value of each item. A workplace might be better off without unnecessary items or items used infrequently. 

Step 2: Set in Order

Once the extra clutter is gone, it's easier to see what's what. Everybody at a workplace has its own strategy for sorting these issues. But which things to consider while set in order.

Step 2: Set in Order

1. Which people or which workstation will use which item.

2. When are the items used?

3. Which item is used most frequently?

4. Should items be grouped by type?

5. Would some placements be more ergonomic for workers than others?

6. Would some placement cut down the unnecessary movements or motions?

During this phase, everybody in the workspace determines what arrangement is most logical. That will require thinking through tasks and the frequency of the tasks.

Step 3: Shine:

The Shine stage of 5s is mainly focused on cleaning up the work area or productive floor. In addition to basic cleaning, shine also involves performing regular maintenance on equipment and machinery. 

Step 3: Shine:

Planning for maintenance ahead of time means the business can catch problems and prevent breakdown.

In 5s everyone in the organization takes responsibility for cleaning up their workstations, on daily basis. 

Step 4: Standardize 

After completing the above 3 steps, things at the workspace should look pretty good. The problem is when 5s is new at the company, it's easy to clean and get organized. Then slowly let things slide back to the way they were. 

Step 4: Standardize 

Standardize makes 5s different from typical spring-cleaning projects. Standardize systematizes everything that just happened and turns one-time efforts into habits.

Standardize assigns regular tasks, creates schedules, and post-instruction so these activities become routines. 

Step: 5: Sustain

Once everything of 5s is in place, the business must perform the ongoing work of maintaining those procedures and update them as per requirements. Sustain refers to the process of keeping 5s running smoothly, but also keeping everyone in the organization involved.