Are You 5 S Compliant?

We had a meeting recently about implementing 5S throughout our company. At first I was not enthused. It just sounded like more work to add to my long list of tasks. We watched a webinar that was a little too repetitive and not really inspiring. But with no choice I began planning. What I didn’t expect, was that as I looked around my office and started seeing some of the useless stuff I had accumulated over the years, I realized that this was a chance to ‘start all over’ and do it right.

We determined as a company that we could not afford to put all work on hold for an entire day to get everything cleaned up, sorted, scrubbed and set up. So I planned out how I would spend 1 hour every day for two weeks working on a different area of my office. The time schedule left me extra days in case an emergency interrupted my schedule. It felt really cathartic and liberating to allow yourself to throw away items you previously believed you might one day need. If you haven’t used it in 5 years, that day is unlikely to ever come.

The real beauty of 5S, though, is to be able to find everything you need right away, because you are now organized. The items you use every day are right at hand and the items you use once a week are close by. Everything else you need is stored nearby without looking messy and is easily and quickly retrieved. And the useless clutter that you don’t need or use, is gone.

If you have not implemented 5S at your place of work I recommend you take the time to do so. The time you save looking for items alone way surpasses the time spent on the implementation.

The author, Marge Bonura, is the Director of Sales & Marketing for New England Machinery, Inc. (NEM). NEM is a leading packaging machinery manufacturer of bottle unscramblers, cappers, orienters, retorquers, lidders, pluggers, pump sorter/placers, scoop feeders, hopper elevators and much more. The company has been in business since 1974 selling to the food, beverage, pharmaceutical, personal care, chemical, household products, automotive and other industries. For more information on NEM, visit their website at www.neminc.com.