How 5S Can Help With Safety And Production

Are you looking for new ways to ensure your manufacturing plant will be safe and maintained properly? There are many different ways in which you can focus your efforts on helping the company to be safe and to increase production. One of the great methods used in reducing defects and improving the safety and production of your company is the 5 S Method. 5S has been around for many years and can be adapted to just about any company. Here are the different things that the 5S method will be able to do:

1. Seiri - this is where you will begin by cleaning the company and keeping it properly organized. You need to be able to focus on having the company properly cleaned so you know what type of hazards that are surrounding the company and to reduce your problems with safety concerns. You will be able to reduce all of the clutter that is getting in the way and causing your employees to delay their productive work because they are always shifting and moving for everything in their way.
2. Seiton - during this phase you will organize the workplace. You already know what you have, not you have a system of placing the tools and other things into areas so you can find them and to make them easy to find and use for the employees. Some companies like to use shadow boards to help with tools as you can glance and quickly see if the tool you need is missing or not. With seiton you will end up having a place for everything and your goal is to ensure that things are where they are supposed to be.
3. Seiso - the third S refers to cleanliness. You want your employees to take time each day to quickly tidy up their workplace and to keep it clean and organized. This is something that you need to do each day. If you aren't keeping the area clean, it can easily become cluttered again and you can have issues in making sure that production will be at it's highest level.
4. Seiketsu - this is the phase where you use consistency to bring about the right type of cleanliness and organization to the company. Seiketsu will include the proper type of housekeeping for the company and to make sure that everyone within the company is able to understand what their role is and how it will impact other areas of the company.
5. Shitsuke - during the last phase you will have a system in place that keeps the company organized and maintains higher standards so you don't end up falling back into the old ways. If you can keep the company efficient and productive, you are less likely to end up with frustrated employees, safety risks, and lower productivity concerns.

In many ways the 5 S method will just take you back to the roots of the company where every tool had a place and every employee had specific job duties. You can use the system to help you in making sure you are actually improving the company and that you are getting the company up to a higher level of production and efficiency.

It is surprising for a lot of companies to see just how much money and time they are wasting by not properly organizing the business. You must really focus your efforts on doing an evaluation of the company like this at least 1-2 times a year to clean out the waste and then to ensure that you are doing all you can to reduce and eliminate them from happening again.