ORIGINS OF 5S

The origin of 5S seems rooted in the works of two American pioneers who were scrupulously studied by Japanese managers.

These were Frederick W. Taylor's Scientific Management (1911) and Henry Ford (1922).

Indeed, Ford's CANDO program (Cleaning up, Arranging, Neatness, Discipline, Ongoing Improvement), which builds on Taylor's work, appears as the obvious origin for 5S.

 What we call "6S" derives from "5S" the method of workplace organization and visual controls popularized by Hiroyuki Hirano (1990).

 The five "Ss" refer to five Japanese words— Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seiketsu, and Shitsuke.

Seiri means to separate needed and unneeded materials and to remove the latter.

Seiton means to neatly arrange and identify needed materials for ease of use.

Seiso means to conduct a cleanup campaign.

Seiketsu means to do seiri, seiton, and seiso at frequent intervals and to standardize your 5S procedures.

Shitsuke means to form the habit of always following the first four Ss.

Additional practices are frequently added to 5S, under such headings as 5S Plus, 6S, 5S+2S, 7S, etc.

The most common additional S is for Safety mentioned above, and  Security as the seventh (7th) S. Purists insist that the other concepts be left out to maintain simplicity and because Safety, for example, is a side-benefit to disciplined housekeeping.

Relation to other concepts

5S is used with other Lean concepts such as SMED, TPM, and Just In Time (JIT). The 5S discipline requires clearing out things which are not needed in order to make it easier and faster to obtain the tools and parts that are needed. This is the foundation of SMED, which in turn enables JIT production. The first step in TPM is operator cleanup of machines, a mandate of 5S.

Masaaki Imai includes a reference to the 5S strategy in his book, Kaizen: The Key to Japan's Competitive Success.

5S in a business context
The 5S methodology has been adopted into a variety of organizations from small business to Fortune 500 companies. All implement the 5S's in the hope to improve productivity and performance.

Such organizations and their achievements include:

Hewlett-Packard Support Center

  • Improved levels of quality communication and information sharing

    Reduced training cycle for new employees

    • Reduced call backs

  • Reduced call time per customer

Boise Cascade

Reduced stored parts inventory at one facility by $300,000

Incident rate divisionwide reduced by 1.5%

Reduced machine Downtime

Office and plant space made available