Lean Inventory Tools – 5s – importance | principles | change
Lean Inventory Tools – 5s
Man, I really need to get organized. How many times have you said that? You know your job is a lot easier if you approach it in an organized manner and being organized starts with your work center whether it’s a factory workstation or an office desk. Lean totally agrees with you. In fact, lean principles include the practice of the five S’s which are designed to help you be organized and make it easier for you to do your job.
The five S’s are derived from five Japanese words that begin with the letter S and they translate to five English words that also begin with S. The first practice is sort. Determine what is needed for you to do your job and remove anything that is not needed. This applies to a factory as well as each workstation. It applies to an entire office building as well as each cubicle and desk.
After you have sorted out what you need, the next practice is to set in order. Arrange materials and tools so that they are easy to find when needed. The third practice is shine. Keep the work area neat and clean. It is much easier to spot safety problems or maintenance issues in a clean and organized area. The next step is to standardize these practices so that they become the normal way things are done in your company.
In fact, you should establish standard procedures for sort, set in order, and shine. Many lean companies extend this practice to all their general processes so that regular activities are standardized across all departments. The last practice of five S is to sustain these standard procedures through training and communication. Sustain also means that you work steadily to improve these practices from day to day. In fact, most lean companies believe that five S is the starting point of continuous improvement.
Getting organized is the first step towards adopting Kaizen which is the practice of small steady improvements to all processes. The five S’s help you to work faster, better, and more accurately. They are intended to help reduce errors throughout the organization and that’s where these practices align with lean inventory management.
An organized machine operator in the factory is less likely to make a processing error. With less rework and scrap incidents, process inventory is reduced. An organized purchasing department is less likely to buy the wrong material or the wrong amount of material from suppliers. An organized shipping department is less likely to send out the wrong order. Although most people associate the five S practices with factory operations, they should be applied to every part of your organization and the result is lower inventory levels and better inventory control.
How is your work center? Do you follow the five S’s? If not, start now. Once you’ve mastered these principles, maybe you can work with your boss to expand this to the rest of your department.