5S: The Drawer

You may have noticed that my blog posts last week grew increasingly long as the week wore on, so I decided to start your week off with a nice basic overview of one of the methodologies, used in Kaizen: 5S. This methodology doesn’t have to be exclusively linked to Kaizen, but the two are closely related.

5S is basically a tactic for dealing with disorganisation and clutter in the workplace. The aim is to make the work environment a cleaner, safer, and more efficient place in which to operate. 5S is named after the list of five Japanese words that outline the process: seiri(sorting), seiton(stabilise), seiso(shine), seiketsu(standardising), and shitsuke(sustain). It’s has been known for other steps to be added, changing the name to 6S or even 7S, but for the sake of not banging on for umpteen paragraphs, and because I like the simplicity of it, I’ll stick with just the vanilla 5S.

I think a good example to use for this one is ‘The Drawer’; you know the one I mean. I’m talking about that drawer that almost everyone seems to have in their house, where every item that doesn’t really have a place seems to end up. Maybe it has a pair of old glasses without any lenses, or an elegant looking old pen that doesn’t have any ink left but you never get around to buying a refill. Often ‘The Drawer’ will contain dozens of batteries, non of which will work when you need them; or it might contain random lengths of string, blunt scissors, a Scotch Tape roll with no tape on it, or more foreign currency than your local bureau de change. Whatever it contains, you’ll no doubt find yourself regularly rummaging through it trying to find one thing or another and thinking that you really ought to sort it out. Well it’s your lucky day, because 5S is here to help.

Sorting

This stage is about clearing the decks, allowing you to see what space and tools you have. Obsolete items need to be thrown out, and things that may be needed later are put to one side. There are things you need, and things you don’t need. Anything you don’t need or want is out. Get rid of all the old batteries that don’t work; chuck the empty tape roll. Pens with ink stay, pens without ink go; if it’s a case of a pen needing a refill, refill it. Foreign money goes to be changed back into ‘real’ money (there, you just got paid for doing a spring clean).

Stabilising

This stage is about organising and making sure that everything is where it needs to be. This isn’t simply about compartmentalising; it’s also about increasing efficiency. In our drawer example, you could place dividers or install a tray with compartments. You might want to place the pens and pencils on the right-hand side of the drawer so that when you open it, they’re closer to the hand you write with (unless of course you’re left-handed, in which case you’d put them on the left). By doing this you’ll also be able to find the thing you need, when you need it, without having to dig through piles of junk. Remember: A place for everything and everything is its place.

Shine

The workspace should be kept tidy and cleaned down at the end of each shift. All items should be put back in their place. Perhaps not as applicable to the drawer example since you won’t be working in the drawer, but that’s not to say you shouldn’t put that pen back when you’ve finished with it, or get rid of those pencil shavings.

Standardization

In a workplace, there may be many people working at many different workstations, doing the same job. To make it easier for different people to do their job at different stations each one should be standardised. At home you could do this by making sure that any drawer containing pens and pencils has them in the front right corner, ensuring you never have to pause to find where they’ve been stored in that particular drawer.

Sustain

This is simply a case of making sure that things don’t slip back to the way they were. You should also be looking at even more ways to improve efficiency. Perhaps it would shave a few milliseconds off grabbing a pencil if it were placed in the drawer with the tip pointing towards you so it’s ready to write when you pick it up. Or it might be more comfortable to pick up if it were pointing out to the side.

And that’s 5S in a nutshell. Just writing about this stuff gives me OCD induced nervous twitches. Suddenly my whole office looks completely… inefficient. I think it’s pretty easy to see the logic in this stuff and, hopefully, you can see how this relates to the seven wastes I wrote about last week (mostly Motion). A huge amount of time and effort can be saved by following this method, and that’s what I’ll be telling my housemates to their horrified faces when they discover I’ve moved the fridge and my bed into the bathroom.