Five 5S Work Culture: A Lean Advantage

Five 5S Work Culture: A Lean Advantage 

Every work place has its own work culture. To improve quality and productivity ‘Lean’ approach has proved to be a magic wand.

What is Lean and 5S?

Lean is a process of continuous improvement in the work to create more value for the customer by various tools. Main principle of the lean is to eliminate ‘Muda’ (waste) in the process to make the process more efficient. One of the successful tools of the Lean is 5S. So what is 5S?

In 1970 Toyota introduced this concept. It was developed by Hiroyuki Hirano for his production systems. It is a structure of continuous improvement program based on principles of Lean. Five small word and they take the process to the new heights. It is also known as visual control or visual factory. Sounds interesting? Let’s look into this in more details.

 

5S is based on the principle of ‘Everything has a place and everything is in its place’. It is a circular-structured methodology of five process segments. They are:

A. Sort (Seiri):

In this phase one has to identify necessary and unnecessary aspects and items in the given process and sort them in a proper structure.

Advantages:

1. Makes work easy.
2. More focus on actual process without disturbance.
3.  Saves time of handling wastes in the process.
4. Helps to make sure hurdle-free workflow.
5. Saves energy and resource utilization.

B. Set in Order (Seiton):

In this phase arrange work flow and accordingly arrange necessary items for smooth work flow.

Advantages:

1. Prevents loss and waste of time and improves production.
2. Reduces the changes of errors occurrence due to unplaced actions.

C. Shine (Seiso):

In this phase one has to make sure that the workplace remains clean. This is achieved by daily inspections of the workplace for any wear and tear and also for any sudden waste generated which may obstruct the process.

Advantages:

1. Acts as a maintenance of equipment and workplace to avoid any obstruction due to problems occurred in equipment.
2.  Improve safety of workplace.
3.  Improve efficacy of the equipment.
4. Cleaning waste generated also improves the productivity and shows positive impact on the quality.

D. Standardize (Seiketsu):

Now in this phase one should work on standardizing processes at work place. Set standard operating procedures for every aspect of the workflow. Standardization is the best practice. Following and maintaining standards of every level of the workflow is necessary. This also includes naming and labeling.

Advantages:

1. It directly supports the quality of the work.
2. Easy to monitor workflow.
3. Any points for improvement can be easily identified.

E. Sustain (Shitsuke):

This phase is nothing but maintaining the positive effects from the previous phases. This includes regular audits, training and constant monitoring. Observations from this phase are again set in for the same cycle of 5S for elimination.

Advantages:

1. This ensures all the above phases are being worked upon.
2.  Maintains proper order.
3.  Improves self-discipline.

Scope of 5S Methodology:

This methodology was initially introduced for manufacturing industry, but has now entered and well expanded in various industries and domains like government, healthcare, media and education.

Overall Goals:

1. Reduction in waste.
2. Improved safety.
3. Improved productivity.
4. Worker’s commitment.
5. Many followers of this work culture also claim that this methodology improves morals and pride in the work place.

Conclusion: -

ITCube focuses on working closely with clients to document various operating processes and to determine the key performance parameters (KPI’s) that can be used for evaluation. As an outsourcing organization, ITCube can also help growing companies identify parts of the business development management process that should be moved to a team that can quickly become an extension of the client’s organization.

To know more you can contact us on info@itcubebpo.com or you can directly call us

 on +1 (614) 434-2376