Climbing on Board with a New 5S Program

You’ve done it! You’ve chosen to start a new 5S program at your business. Get ready for quite the ride with all the improvements that are going to be cascading onto you and your employee’s shoulders as you climb on board with this well-known Lean manufacturing method.

Those improvements don’t happen by themselves though, both upper management and employees must work together to make successful and lasting changes. If done correctly, 5S may help improve:

Efficiency
Safety
Reduce delays
Improve staff morale
Lower costs
Increase profits
Product Quality

There are numerous benefits, as you can see, from using a 5S strategy. It gets even better—5S can be used in any business whether you are working in a school, manufacturing, retail, and many others. 5S is within easy grasp of anyone and is conveniently simple to use if you have the right tools and information.

With that being said, this 5S video made by Creative Safety Supply can lead you in the right direction with a 5S guide geared toward starting this kind of program in your own workplace. The guide, which is free to use by anyone, provides much needed information on what to start with, how to go about it, and what your workplace should look like in the end. Some of the things that are in this guide include the five core principles that 5S is named after: Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardize, Sustain. The guide goes even further to describe the sixth member of the 5S family; Safety.

Each of these core values of 5S are essential for a lasting program rather than one that fizzles out if the culture of the workplace doesn’t adapt to the new changes. The key to 5S here is consistency, everything has a place and those must be taken care of continuously to be able to form habits. In this case, habits in the safety world make worker’s lives easier and more productive.