We’ve been doing workplace organization wrong
A New Way of Thinking about 5S
5S is a Japanese business methodology that has become popularized in the manufacturing and industrial sectors for the last few decades, and it is becoming more common to see it in the public sector. 5S, mostly taught as a workplace organizational tool, is made up of the following 5 Japanese words:
Typically the order in which organizations have been trying to implement the 5S framework is in the order you see here. In most cases, Western-based organizations are failing miserably at being able to follow the 5S’. After doing some research into the meaning behind the Japanese words it isn’t much of a surprise to me. Some underlying assumptions are true in Japan that is not in the West.
Context is always an important part of adopting a system or tool from one business or industry to another. What I have found is that the Japanese don’t follow 5S in the same order that was adopted in Western business culture. It would appear to me that there is a gap. I would like to help close part of that gap today.
Let’s unpack the 5S framework from the Western model first.
The First S
The first word is Seiri (整理). In the Western world, we have translated this as Sort. What it means is to make order…
