Lean Manufacturing 5SWould you wish to know about the waste reduction system which optimizes productivity in a production process? 5S is a method of Lean Manufacturing which does exactly this by maintaining a very orderly workplace to achieve operational results on a consistent basis. A lot of Lean Manufacturing analysts confer that 5s is the most comprehensive and well laid out method to reduce wastes in a production process. What is 5S all about? 5S is all about a step by step process of reducing wastes. It advocates the waste reduction mechanism by an end-end stage process of Sort-Sustain. Each of those stages have a Japanese nomenclature. They are Seiri (Sort), Set in Order (Seiton), Shine (Seiso), Standardize (Seiketsu) and Shitsuke (Sustain). As it can be seen they themselves are a step by step process of reducing wastes and maintaining a very orderly workplace. The 5S method is the most basic method of all Lean methods and it provides a good platform for introduction to techniques like Cellular Manufacturing, Just in Time production etc. Needless to say, why is 5S able to do that? Because the heart of the 5S philosophy is the heart of any lean manufacturing technique - Waste reduction. What are its benefits? A lean manufacturing 5S philosophy when applied to a production process, ensures that waste is reduced at all costs from the production processes. Lean Manufacturing waste as one of the major lag times in production processes. Reduction in waste would mean faster cycle times for the process and hence increased customer satisfaction levels. 5S also advocates maintaining a clean workplace which goes a long way in the workers maintaining healthy work conditions. As a method, 5S also aids workers' efforts to reduce unplanned downtime which at time can be quite a bit of pain for production cycle times as unplanned downtime directly impacts productivity in a negative way. 5S also enhances techniques which reduces the in-house inventory. In-house inventory has been attributed as one of the main reasons why lag times in production cycles increase. By reducing the in-house inventory, one can effectively employ lean techniques on a production process to generate optimum advantages. 5S is a philosophy which should be implemented in every Lean Manufacturing initiative on production processes. Implementation of 5S not only ensures that waste is reduced by means of a simple technique of maintaining an orderly workplace, it also provides a good foundation for a lot of the production oriented techniques like Cellular Manufacturing can also be launched. Though, before implementing 5S Methods on a production process, the lean professional would need to have studied the entire waste reduction process in totality. |