Start Cleaning House with 5S – A simple yet powerful lean tool

There are many parts to lean manufacturing. When you, or any of your colleagues, start thinking about lean, you probably begin with the aspect of paperwork reduction. Of course, we all feel the pain of excessive and tedious red tape, but lean processes, in fact, touch on every single part of manufacturing, and non-manufacturing, business practices.

5S is a perfect example of a bottoms-up approach to the lean methodology. There are many businesses, particularly in manufacturing, that are incredibly disorganized, leading to massively inefficient business practices, lost time, and sometimes even workplace injuries. 5S refers to the practice of workplace organization, and the methodical process of optimizing the layout of a manufacturing plant or workstation to become the most efficient, upbeat, and productive workplace it can become.

Appropriately named, 5S is the name given to the process because each step starts with the letter ‘S’. Started by Toyota in the 1960’s, it has framed the success of many manufacturing plants. The fundamental basis behind 5S is that a person or workstation will never waste time looking for tools and equipment because everything has its own place, is appropriately labeled, and flows to the point where the tool is within reach of where the worker will find themselves when working. If 5S is implemented properly, it is common to see efficiencies increase by a solid 20-30%.

One of the more common missteps when a company implements 5S is to have the focus come from the top-down, with management recognizing the need for process improvement, but never consulting with the worker that will be practicing and implementing the 5S on a daily basis. Without buy-in from every person on the shop floor, a company will never truly achieve the goals outlined by a 5S method.

The 5 S’s, while seemingly complex, are actually relatively straightforward and simple. They are best viewed as pieces and independent of each other instead of holistically. If broken down into its fundamental parts, the 5 steps, you will find that they are nothing more than a standardized approach to optimization. As you can see in the Figure (1), the 5S concept is one in which every step should be intertwined within each other. If an organization is truly on board with the 5S process, the sustainment of the process should maintain a constant cycle of improvement, and each ‘S’ should merge with the other steps, making it near impossible to determine when one starts and the other begins.

The first ‘S’ is “Sort”, or “Seiri”. Management, or possibly the workers themselves, should go about the workplace and take note of which tools, equipment, and supplies are not needed for the everyday operation of the plant. If one is not needed, it is discarded, or at the very least, removed from the shop floor. Some tools and equipment will not be able to be discarded or removed because they are used, but only infrequently. If this is the case, then these tools should be noted as infrequently used, to be dealt with later.

The next phase is oftentimes considered the most important phase of the five. This is where items are arranged, or 'Straightened' (or 'Seiton') systematically and methodically. All of the tools that were identified as unnecessary in the ‘Sort’, phase have been discarded, so this phase should be easy. You just simply place the tools such that workflow is maximized, and no tool is any more than 30 seconds away from even the least experienced worker. This step is best accomplished either by the worker that will be conducting the work or with their direct input.

It may help to include a diagram of all tools and their locations that is readily accessible for reference for the worker during this step.

The next, and least popular stage is ‘Sweep’, or Seisō. This step is where the shop is cleaned, and a new policy of periodic cleaning is implemented. Most manufacturing facilities find that performing this step at the end of every shift is the ideal time for this action. The most important aspect here is to maintain the shop in the order in which step 2 has identified as being ideal.

As discussed earlier, all of the processes described here are not worth anything unless complete buy-in by the average worker on the floor is achieved and practiced. This is where step 4 comes in, ‘Standardize’, or ‘Seiketsu’. This is the step in which all personnel who will be practicing the 5 steps on a daily basis are brought completely onboard and the practices are standardized by forms, procedures, personnel assignments, and workstation ownership.

The final step is that of ‘Sustain’, or ‘Shitsuke’. This step focuses on the requirement to maintain a constant expectation of good lean practices through feedback systems, evaluation and mentoring, training, and auditing. The company has come a long way in improving the workplace, and maintaining it in that improved state is a necessity.

It may not always be apparent as to when a company should use the 5S methodology to improve the workplace. Before any improvement is attempted, management should commission a study to improve their chances of finding the processes that should lead to a leaning of the workplace through 5S. The following is a good example of how the entire process can be conducted.

A new manager was hired to help improve the processes conducted on the shop floor of a generator manufacturing plant. The second day on the job, he notices something that triggered his experienced eye: a worker was walking all the way across the floor, passing by two working cranes, to go to a toolbox and retrieve a specialized tool in order to perform one of the steps he had to perform in order to output a certain component characteristic to his workstation.

The manager requested approval from his management to conduct a 5S study in order to identify places in which improvement could be achieved.

For one full shift, he plotted out the path of the worker he took note of earlier. He found that not only did the worker go to the toolbox while walking under the crane, he also made a couple of stops to the grinding workstation to polish a part, which was on the other side of the shop as well.

The next day, the manager talked in depth to the worker, and helped go through his workstation. He found that there was about 11 tools that were old, outdated, and never used anymore. Thos tools were immediately discarded. After this, the manager helped the worker get a new set of tools that included the one he was going to the toolbox for. He also subtracted the polishing of the part from the process and instead added it to the procedures for the workstation that actually had the grinder at the station. This way, a separate trip was not necessary for the tool nor the grinder.

After they went through and rearranged the tools such that they were always within arm’s reach for the worker, they came up with a schedule for the entire shift to clean the last 15 minutes of their shift. These were all written down and signed by every worker in every shift.

This is a simple example, but most 5S implementations are this simple. If you have any interest in making your manufacturing plant more efficient, you have to start looking at each workstation as a conduit in which work should flow with no restriction. Do this, and your profits will skyrocket.

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