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5S (Five S) is a workplace organization method that uses a list of five Japanese words: seiri (整理), seiton (整頓), seisō (清掃), seiketsu (清潔), and shitsuke (躾). These have been translated as 'sort', 'set in order', 'shine', 'standardize', and 'sustain'.[1] The list describes how to organize a work space for efficiency and effectiveness by identifying and sorting the items used, maintaining the area and items, and sustaining the new organizational system. The decision-making process usually comes from a dialogue about standardization, which builds understanding among employees of how they should do the work.
In some quarters, 5S has become 6S, the sixth element being safety (safe).[2]
Other than a specific stand-alone methodology, 5S is frequently viewed as an element of a broader construct known as visual control,[3] visual workplace,[4] or visual factory.[5][6] Under those (and similar) terminologies, Western companies were applying underlying concepts of 5S before publication, in English, of the formal 5S methodology. For example, a workplace-organization photo from Tennant Company (a Minneapolis-based manufacturer) quite similar to the one accompanying this article appeared in a manufacturing-management book in 1986.[7]
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