Posted 9:39 PM by Mark Graban
I think 5S is more than just "cleaning up" as we would do with our bedroom or our desk. I saw a conference room last week that said "Please 5S the room when you're done" as if "5S" was a synonym for "pick up after your meeting." I think that's a common misperception that 5S means "pick up after yourself."

5S is a process that calls for things that aren't done every day:

The first step is "Sort" -- the equivalent of a spring cleaning, removing all of the un-needed things from the area in question.

Once you've "sorted" and defined places for everything, ala "a place for everything and everything in its place". Getting a team to agree on where things should go isn't always easy -- people like to do things their own way sometimes. But the reason we do this workplace organization is to reduce waste -- namely the waste involved in spending time looking for things, that or the waste involved in quality defects that occur because a gauge/tool is missing.

Only then you move on to the maintenance stages -- "things you should do everyday."

My other late night thought -- you don't do 5S for 5S's sake. It's to reduce waste and to improve people's job satisfaction by reducing frustration caused by things being lost and/or missing.

Cheers,

Mark