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The Japanese 5S' System - Part II PDF Print E-mail
Written by Namucana Musiwa   
Tuesday, 16 February 2010 00:00
Today I will continue with the second in a series of articles on cleanliness and in discussing this topic I shared with readers last week how our Managing Director, at Boart Longyear Zambia, Peart Siwale,  taught us to adopt the Japanese 5S’ System as a key to a total quality environment.

Before management and supervisors tell other people they have to implement the 5S’, they need to take a good look at things and see if they really understand why themselves.  Peart, who bytheway, I still work with to deliver training in Total Quality Management and Customer Care, is one person who practices what he preaches.  While at Boart he was committed to the five ‘S’ totally and this was evident from the manner in which he kept his office, car and everything that he used.  I had an opportunity to visit his home and was impressed to note that even his household had embraced the five ‘S’ and their home was clean and orderly.  Peart made it a point to convert his two General Managers, Jost Chabala and the late Bill Mwiinga to the five ‘S’ and the two General Managers in turn converted their subordinates to the five ‘S’.  My job as Personnel and Administrative Officer included, among other things, staff welfare and so from time to time I visited staff residences to attend to repairs and maintenance issues.  You could tell a Boart house from a distance.  To begin with, most of the Boart houses had steel bar gates that made the inside visible.  The gardens were green, fresh and attractive with neatly trimmed lawns.  The inside of nearly all the houses and flats were spotlessly clean.  It was as if their spouses underwent some training in cleanliness and neatness.  Residents passing by Jost’s house on Freedom Avenue, for instance, would marvel at how the outside of the premises appeared and would be heard asking ‘bushe apa pe kala umusungu?’  (is this house occupied by a white person?).

Practicing what you preach is as important at the office as it is at home.  Before you tell your children to make their beds, make sure your own bed is made as soon as you get up.  Before you tell your children to fold their clothes and pack them neatly, make sure your won clothes are packed neatly.

The Japanese 5S’ system is part of Kaizen Management.  Kaizen is Japanese for good change.  Kaizen means continuous improvement.  The other parts of Kaizen management include Standardization and Muda Elimination.  Muda is Japanese for wastage.  Any activity that does not add value is Muda.  Wastage is also referred to in Japanese as Mura or Muri. Muda robs us of resources that can be used on activities and initiatives that create value and should therefore be eliminated.  The Japanese 5S’ System can help us eliminate muda.  I have discussed wastage in this column before but will discuss it again sometime in the future.

When you look at why we need the 5S’ at work, it is immediately clear that there are many things that we do without thinking.  The 5S’ can help in everything we do.

The 5S’ are like a mirror reflecting our attitudes and behavioural patterns.  Even so, we all too often avert our eyes and prefer not to look at what we see there.

Many of the everyday problems that we encounter would be cleared up if only we paid more attention to the 5S’.  Not observing the 5S’ is a mark of a lazy mind and a slothful attitude.  An observant person can within the first five minutes of visiting an organisation determine the kind of attitudes that exist in the organisation.  Dealing with an organisation that keeps asking you to provide them with a duplicate invoice because they cannot find the original says a lot about their internal organizational skills.

Every part of the 5S process is important.  Every step has the potential for opening our eyes.  The 5S’ are the best way there is to eliminate waste.  That is why the 5S’ have been adopted in the electronics and precision machinery industries at the technological forefront. 

Each of the 5S words is simple enough in itself, yet each has a depth of meaning and significance for the workplace.  However,  because they have entered common usage, people tend to think they are not sophisticated and hence not “modern”.  People tend to understand them as meaning many different things.  It is essential that you make sure everybody has the same understanding of the terms and their meaning – that everyone is doing the same thing.  Sometimes this will mean developing special action programs for specific purposes.

It is easy to start the 5S’ activities, but it is very difficult to maintain a steady pace and to become truly proficient in all of their aspects.  But if you do not keep moving forward, you will find yourself backsliding.  What should each person be doing?  How?  Why?  It is essential that everyone be committed to implementing the 5S’ all the time.  For the next two to three weeks we shall look at the deeper meaning of each of the five Japanese words constituting the 5S’ and relate them to our own environment.  Keep on reading.
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