Why is sorting an important step for 5s? Sorting, in regards to 5s, means eliminating all unnecessary tools, parts, equipment, supplies, documents, materials and inventories.  This step can be tedious and difficult but before progress is made in 5s, sorting needs to happen. Sometimes it is very hard for people to realize that certain things are irrelevant in their work area and eliminating them will clear up space for more important things.

When sorting, don’t go overboard.  Make sure to keep essential items. Throwing things away that you may need later will only hinder the 5s process. Eventually, 5s-ing can save you money, and if you are buying things you already had, it becomes evident that you went overboard in the beginning.  Items can still be stored and moved as long as they are identified appropriately with labels or signs and they need to be kept in an appropriate space.

Are their areas in your office or homes that need to be sorted?Tweet

Have you ever heard anyone within your company talk about 5s-ing? It is an important topic in today’s organizations. So what is it? 5s is a method used by many leading companies to improve quality, reduce waste, and demonstrate respect for personnel, equipment, and process.

5s stands for sort, straighten (set in order), shine, standardize and sustain. Over the next few postings, we will go over what each of these mean in accordance to 5s.  The first S that we will go over is Straighten (set in order).

Straightening in conjunction with 5s means almost the same things as straightening in your house. Everything should be in its place. Sounds simple? Well, with 5s it also needs to labeled and arranged in a way that will promote an efficient workflow. It’s so much nicer to not waste time daily looking for a file or tape.  Labeling everything may seem tedious, but say you have a stock of receipt tape in a certain place, clearly labeled, when it starts to run low, you know to order more.

Straightening may not seem like it, but it’s a cost saver. You won’t order more supplies than needed because you know how much stock you have. You won’t waste time looking for something because you know where it will be. You will spend more time completing your work than finding the supplies to finish it.

Would straightening be effective in your workplace? Share your thoughts below.Tweet

What is typography? A boring definition of typography, according to about.com would be, “the practical and artistic arrangement of type and printing with type.” Although there is nothing wrong with defining it in that way, typography is much more.

It started in the early days of printing with the invention of the moveable type and printing press. They could arrange the type on the page in any way they would like. The drawback then, was that the fonts were standard and there wasn’t much variation. As things moved forward, typography was actually a unique occupation until the digital age and then things started to change. Now, typography is almost like art. You can arrange your type in any way that you would like it. Bold the letters, italicize, make every letter look different, it really is just what is appealing to the eye and the type of work you are doing.

A cool design aspect with typography is that it’s common now for typography to be used to spell out shapes with words. You can see an example of that here: Ki6rcXvUWP0

The most important thing about typography is that you need to make it interesting.  To the consumer, if it is boring to look at it, it might be boring to read. Use appealing colors, switch it up and don’t overload the design. Typography can be a lot of fun; you just have to use your imagination!Tweet