How to Use 5S in Your Company

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 final installment in our series, we will examine how you can utilize 5S principles in your organization, and how the framework can help you effectively use your QMS.

As has been noted in prior articles in this series, 5S is not a quality management system in and of itself. Rather, it is a framework of principles and their associated practices. Because of this, 5S is best used as the basis of, or complement to, a managerial structure with set quality goals.

5S can provide core concepts for a QMS, particularly if the areas for remedial action are focused on responsibility, group belonging, and workplace organization. The principles of 5S can be especially valuable when considering the current sociological structure of your company. If workers primarily see themselves as disparate individuals, and particularly if they feel siloed away from each other even within the same department, 5S can help create a greater sense of unity and shared involvement. One of the key ideas behind 5S is that each worker should ideally feel that their actions affect others, so if this sense of personal connectedness is lacking, training and social bonding that revolve around 5S practices may be able to help. Consider incorporating activities which can enable this; these could include seminars, retreats, or informal social events. Regardless of approach, the key goal should be encouraging workers to connect with one another and know each other, since it is from this basis of positive interaction that a genuine communal structure can be established.

5S can also be useful if workers in your company have difficulty maintaining and continuing best practices in the workplace. By instituting a culture of ‘sweeping’ (cleaning and visually inspecting), workers are encouraged to remain aware and proactive. And by cultivating a sense of self-responsibility, 5S can build in each individual worker a desire to perpetually maintain and improve every aspect of their lives, not just the cleanliness of a workspace. These steps are harder for a company's management to implement, since they are largely individual to the workers. But achieving them is nonetheless possible, and the proper approach should involve regular communication with workers that stresses the importance of their individual commitment and participation, rather than simply creating a series of checklists that they feel obligated to fulfill. Positive feeling and motivation is crucial; one way to accomplish this is to connect successful continuance of these actions with a sense of responsibility not to abstract concepts like "the company" or "management," but to the social construct established between the workers. If they "do it for each other," then they will feel motivated to preserve social harmony, as well as the safety and wellbeing of their friends.

To that end, companies may find that 5S works best for them when they do not primarily regard it as a series of physical steps and actions, but rather as a philosophical approach to organization (both of the space and the self, and by extension, the group). It may also be worthwhile to consider the sociological context of how 5S was formed (arising from disparate human desires across the world, all sharing a similar instinct for communal improvement and responsibility). Because business management strategies tend to be dry and impersonal concepts that lack resonance with workers, they can be difficult to explain, much less care about. But everyone, regardless of job title or responsibility level, can find value in building a better community, because it taps into the innate idealism of humanity. Therefore, changing the way in which 5S is described and pitched to employees may be the single most important deployment strategy. Some people may not understand, or even object to the idea of a philosophy in a purely managerial context (think of how some of these approaches have been described as "New Age" or "woo-woo" and therefore considered unserious). To counteract this, the very serious and tangible benefits of 5S can be invoked, as can the deeper cultural underpinning of the framework's Japanese background. Simply because a concept seems different does not mean that it is mystical, but rather that we have to first learn more about it in order to properly understand and implement it.

By contemplating the cultural context of 5S (the merging of American and Japanese social and business philosophies, which yielded a new series of principles), companies can open their perspectives to the incorporation of many diverse and intriguing ideas, arising throughout the world and from wide varieties of people. In so doing, companies can become more responsive to the multitude of concepts and values that today define the world of productivity, efficiency, and good work. From this synthesis of ideas and cultures, companies and organizations of all kinds can continue to benefit from the 5S framework, and by extension, achieve new levels of orderliness and equality of responsibility throughout the whole of our human society.

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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