Implementing The System Of The Five S's

By Lillian Willards


It takes total involvement and active participation for your employees to adopt the principles of the five S system for successful implementation. If done right your business will benefit from highly motivated employees who are eager to implement this process of change as well as business operations that run smoothly.

Here is how to implement the system of the five S's. Select a department to begin with. Because the five S system will use resources, you should start where the amount of time to reap its rewards is the least. If done right you will have a good example to set for the next step. The idea is to replicate and duplicate.

Conduct 5S system workshops for training. In a production factory, the training involves all staff, managers, maintenance, and production personnel.

Shitsuke represents the future because it's discipline. Even world class schedules are useless if you don't follow them. When cleaning, agree on a policy with top management. Use audits to prevent the level from dropping. Appoint employees who will be responsible for all of the systems that you introduce and put the pictures from seiso on the walls.

Seiso means to be clean to the point of shininess. For the acceptance of the five S system cleanliness is critical. There are two primary goals of seiso. Document what you need to get there and agree on what cleaning standard you believe is mutually the best. Much the same as seiri, everyone working in the area, including staff and managers, should perform the seiso activity. Divide the area into small parts and appoint teams to take care of each area. Allow the teams to determine which task that they want to do, and ask them to estimate how frequently this cleaning job needs to be repeated in the future. Lastly, take a picture of the new standard. Don't forget seiso is a onetime activity and the next S will continue this new standard.

Seiketsu means a cleanup that is standardized. All of the other parts of the five S system are worthless if you should fail here. As far as seiketsu is concerned you can also use some good documentation of seiso. If you do, you will already understand what the required housekeeping jobs are, and you will have an estimate of their intervals. These new habits won't be something that you have invented. Rather, they were proposed and introduced by the employees who do seiso. To schedule the proposed activities you simply have to determine which system you will use.

Seiton means to set everything in order. Seiton focuses on fixing or arranging everything beginning from that which has the most efficient access and is the easiest. This is the efficient arrangement and placement of materials and equipment. It might be a task that will empower your work teams or you could also incorporate seiton into the plan of action from seiri.

Treat seiri which means organization and is an activity that is designed to reduce waste. The goal is to make housekeeping as easy as possible and to reduce the amount of time that is takes to clean house. The best way to accomplish this is to find a facility in cross functional teams and look for anything that requires effort that is unnecessary. Remove hazards, find leakages, mark all known problems, and sort out unnecessary items. Mark all of the problems with a red tag and make a plan of action plan that you carry out within 30 days.

If you are consistent you will achieve impressive results in the long term.




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