Evolution of 5S Over Time

Since the 1950s, American companies have gradually embraced quality management systems (QMS). This adoption has yielded significant benefits, increasing product and workplace quality while improving employee satisfaction, productivity, profitability, and safety. But did you know that many of the concepts underlying quality management have actually come from Japan? In this article series, we will explore one of the best-known Japanese quality frameworks, known as the “5S (Five S)” system. Our investigation will showcase how this popular set of management principles came into being, how American ideas influenced the Japanese creators, and how additional practices have been added to the framework in recent years.

In this installment, we will consider how 5S has changed with the times, from the initial ideas proposed by William Edwards Deming, Joseph M. Juran, to the innovative interpretations proposed by Japanese efficiency managers at Toyota, to modern framework variants created throughout the world today. As has been the case throughout its history, the evolution of 5S demonstrates how intercultural exchange and reinterpretation has led to significant improvements of the managerial system.

The exact path linking Deming, Juran, and the crystallization of their teachings with Japanese cultural and social concepts remains unclear. What is certain is that, in the immediate post-war era through the 1950s, Japanese social scientists, entrepreneurs, and engineers with awareness of these concepts were synthesizing the principles that would ultimately form the 5S framework. There is no way to definitively say that any one individual “created” the framework. However, the aggregation of ideas at Toyota, which at the time was a small and struggling automaker, is generally recognized as the first successful implementation of 5S concepts. The version of the 5S ideas implemented at Toyota is worthy of its own article, as it also involves other crucial quality and structural management frameworks such as ‘just-in-time’ production; for the purposes of this article, the innovation as it relates to 5S will be described quickly.

In the early 1950s, while seeking to rebuild their devastated factories and recover from wartime losses, Toyota’s founder Kiichiro Toyoda, his cousin Eiji Toyoda, and engineer Taiichi Ohno attempted to create not only an efficient management system for the company, but an entire way of behaving and living that would reinforce it. Together with external consultant Shigeo Shingo, they envisioned the 5S system as the basis for creating a larger quality management system and organizational culture (the Toyota Production System and Toyota Way, respectively). However, these ideas were not written down or even fully understood immediately; they developed over time, and through the company’s own rigorous study of itself from the 1950s to early 2000s. Indeed, there is a case to be made that what developed at Toyota developed organically, rather than as a consciously directed activity. Numerous other influences helped shape the development of the Toyota Production System and Toyota Way; for example, in the mid-1950s, Eiji Toyoda visited Ford in the United States and studied what was applicable, and what was not, for a Japanese context. Kiichiro Toyoda envisioned his company serving customers in much the same way as a grocery store, only providing products when they would be ‘fresh’ and desired (the ‘just-in-time’ philosophy). Taiichi Ohno, who worked for Toyota’s predecessor company (a manufacturer of looms), understood the entire production process and proposed that the best way to improve quality and efficiency was to identify and remove sources of waste. Shigeo Shingo had already spent a decade teaching workers and management about operational efficiency by the time he started working with Toyota, and he was instrumental in helping to document Toyota’s unique application of the 5S principles (which in turn helped Toyota and other companies understand them). All of this led to the continued refinement and improvement of the 5S conceptual framework as applicable to Toyota. This was both ironic and appropriate, given that 5S emphasizes continuous action to maintain and improve the workplace.

Outside of Toyota and Japan, the 5S framework gradually became known throughout the rest of the world when business management experts, seeking to explain the ‘Japanese economic miracle’ of post-war recovery, codified the terms into books and sociological explanations. For example, in the 1990s, Japanese authors Hiroyuki Hirano and Takashi Osada published books aimed at a broader global audience to explain what 5S was meant to accomplish and how it could be applied internationally. Taiichi Ohno and Shigeo Shingo both wrote books from the perspective of Toyota’s systems, and these were widely translated and disseminated. Perhaps most influential from an American perspective, in 1990, scientists at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) wrote a classic text, The Machine that Changed the World, which largely introduced US audiences to the concept of lean manufacturing (an outgrowth of the 5S framework and Toyota Production System). As global audiences understood these concepts, they began to change them, adapting 5S to serve their own circumstances. This led not only to the creation of quality management systems which used 5S as a basis, but also to alteration of the 5S framework itself.

For example, some companies today instead use a ‘6S’ system, which adds “Safety / Security” as a principle. Under this revised framework, which was first proposed in the 2010s and early 2020s, the 5S approach is brought full circle to incorporate an idea from one of its inspirational predecessors: the Training Within Industry (TWI) program of America’s World War II era. Proponents of the 6S approach have proposed adding a ‘step 0’ to the existing 5-step 5S practice, drawing from TWI, which would place an emphasis on workplace safety as the underlying position of situational awareness from which the other 5 steps would unfold. First, the workplace should be evaluated for threats, and all potential threats should be identified. Second, remedial measures should be identified and explained to workers. Third, these measures should be put into practice and reinforced with training. Fourth, results should be controlled through the ensuing 5S process.

But the proposals for revision haven’t stopped there. In 2021, a group of scientists in Spain proposed expanding still further to include a ‘7S’ system, which would add the concept of “Social” to the framework. Designed to represent the movement toward corporate responsibility, the “Social” principle focuses not only on how 5S/6S affects workers and workplaces, but also how it affects all lifeforms and the planet as a whole. In a sense, this vast broadening of the framework is itself an invocation of the original Japanese concepts underlying 5S: that the system is comprised of all individuals, and that all individuals comprise the system. Therefore, so long as individuals remain unaffected by the system’s positive change, the change cannot be fully complete. Philosophy and business management truly have merged in these latest iterations of understanding the core beliefs underlying 5S. These proposals demonstrate that 5S remains an evolving series of practices and will likely continue to be adjusted as scientific and sociological understandings of the workplace continue to evolve.

Our 5S article series continues with:

Benefits of 5S

Read the next part now!

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Authors

Yelena Rymbayeva is the Chief Marketing Officer of QMS2GO. A veteran marketing professional with experience in software, product development, and entertainment-focused startups, she has written extensively on business organizational best practices, efficiency strategies, and quality management system implementation, with an emphasis on small/mid-sized manufacturers and technology development companies.

Nicholas R. Zabaly is the Editor-in-Chief of QMS2GO’s research and knowledgebase operations. An experienced researcher and technical writer, he has worked closely with the company since its foundation and serves as its lead article writer. Specific to the content of this article, he has experience working with Japanese companies and has knowledge of the Japanese language.

Additional References and Resources

The 5S principles are among the most widely discussed business practices of the past 70 years, and significant information and guidance can be obtained by considering the vast quantities of literature devoted to understanding them. While reviewing these resources, please keep in mind that alternative translations of the five ‘S’ words from the original Japanese exist, and that some may provide contradictory interpretations to each other, as well as to the overall approach adopted by this article. Being aware of these alternate interpretations is important, and when in doubt, a consultation of primary Japanese sources is generally the best approach for resolving contradictions which may arise from translation.

[1] American Society for Quality (ASQ) – “Five S Tutorial” – https://asq.org/quality-resources/five-s-tutorial

[2] Fast Company – “Why Designers are Reviving This 30-Year-Old Japanese Productivity Theory” (Meg Miller, May 26, 2017) – https://www.fastcompany.com/90126285/why-designers-are-reviving-this-30-year-old-japanese-productivity-theory

[3] Los Angeles Times – “Rebuilding Japan With the Help of Two Americans” (Mark Magnier, October 25, 1999) – https://www.latimes.com/archives/la-xpm-1999-oct-25-ss-26184-story.html

[4] Juran Institute – “The History of Quality Management System” (March 4, 2020) – https://www.juran.com/blog/quality-management-system/

[5] University of Michigan Press – “Managing ‘Modernity’: Work, Community, and Authority in Late-Industrializing Japan and Russia” (Rudra Sil, 2002) – https://books.google.com/books?id=e9PzMlVrERUC

[6] Productivity Press – “5 Pillars of the Visual Workplace: The Sourcebook for 5S Implementation” (Hiroyuki Hirano, 1995) – https://archive.org/details/5pillarsofvisual00hira/mode/2up

[7] Asian Productivity Organization – “The 5S’s: Five Keys to a Total Quality Environment” (Takashi Osada, 1991) – https://books.google.com/books?id=Ll-1AAAAIAAJ

[8] Lean Community – “5S System or 6S System?” (Bartosz Misiurek, 2022) – https://leancommunity.org/the-5s-system-or-the-6s-system/

[9] Sustainability – “From Lean 5S to 7S Methodology Implementing Corporate Social Responsibility Concept” (Jon Fernández Carrera, Alfredo Amor del Olmo, María Romero Cuadrado, María del Mar Espinosa, Luis Romero Cuadrado, September 29, 2021) – https://www.mdpi.com/2071-1050/13/19/10810