The final “S” in the 5s process is sustaining. What does this mean? You have done all of this work to 5s your workplace or office, so now; you need to make sure that it stays just as nice now as it will 5 months from now.

To accomplish this task, make sure that you are reinforcing 5s daily. A common way to make sure that you are keeping up with the sustaining process is to use a daily/weekly scorecard to track areas. If you catch that things are out of order early, than you avoid having to start the process over. Think about having meetings with all shifts about the current state of things or daily reminder emails that can go around your organization.

Remember, the key to 5s is consistency. Think about all of the benefits that you have gained through using this method in your workplace. It saves time, money, and energy when everything has its place and when there is a place for everything.

What do you feel is the most beneficial thing about the 5s process?Tweet

Work areas should be consistently maintained and work practices should be standardized. So what is standardization? In 5s, it means to keep the roles and responsibilities clear to everyone and make sure to apply them to members of your team. 5s is a process that needs maintaining, so make sure to train people on what needs to be done in their areas and help them apply these techniques.

Not only is the work area important, but you should also think about your online practices (i.e. company intranet) as well and how documents and work instructions are kept and maintained. They need to go through the same practices as your building in the 5s process.

Keeping things standardized will increase everyone’s potential and it will reduce the amounts of errors that could potentially happen. Make sure that you are constantly going through work instructions so that they are up to date. Keep quantities of extra supplies minimal so that you can reduce waste and try to avoid having an over abundance of stock. Most importantly, make sure that everyone in the 5s process has a role and that they are constantly keeping up with standardization.

What does your work place do to keep up with maintaining work areas and online documents?Tweet

We can all admit that there are times that we clean solely because we know we are having guests over or we tidy our office because we are having a meeting. We do this because we know that a clean space suggests professionalism and care in our work. Cleaning or “shining” is a significant step in the 5s process.

Cleaning our areas is very important and when done correctly, it shows a certain pride in our work. Not only does “shine” include cleaning but it also covers keeping your area consistently organized and bright. This is not something that should be done on occasion but as an everyday activity to keep up with the 5s process.

When the shine process of 5s is followed correctly, you should be able to recognize when something is out of place or if a problem exists. When there is always an array of chaos, problem areas are hard to spot. You will find that when shining is done consistently, that people will be happier and more productive.

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