Also called sort set shine standardize sustain, 5S audit, workplace organization
What is 5S?
A five-step method for organizing a work area so that anything missing or out of place is obvious immediately.
What else it is called
- Other names
- sort set shine standardize sustain, 5S audit, workplace organization
- In French
- les 5S
Related entries
Understanding 5S
Five steps, named in Japanese and usually translated into five English words beginning with S. Sort: remove everything not needed in the area. Set in order: give what remains a marked home, placed where it is used. Shine: clean, and in cleaning, inspect. Standardize: write down how the first three are kept up and who does it. Sustain: audit it so that it survives the month after the launch.
The reason it works is not appearance. When every tool has an outlined place, a missing tool is visible across the room, and when a machine is clean a leak is visible the day it starts. The method turns problems into something you can see from a distance.
It is also the most over-used item in this list. It is visible, it photographs well, and it is frequently the whole of what a plant means when it says it is doing lean. Tidying up a plant whose real problem is a six-week changeover produces a clean plant with a six-week changeover.
In practice
The honest audit is to go in on a Tuesday six months after the launch rather than on the day of the tour. What survives is the measure of whether the fifth step was real.
Frequently asked
Is 5S a good place to start?
It is a good place to start if the area is genuinely disorganized enough that people lose tools and time. It is a poor place to start if your real constraint is changeover time or supplier delivery, which it often is.
What is the sixth S?
Safety, in most versions, added by North American plants. Purists argue safety should be built into all five rather than bolted on, and in practice adding it does no harm if it keeps safety in the conversation.