天美传媒

The first stage of the 5S System is Sort. Begin by going through each item on, in, and under your desk and decide what is necessary and what is not. Remove items that don鈥檛 help you complete your job daily or add value. You will see an immediate impact from completing this first step.听

• Recycle or throw away excess paper, empty water bottles, old wrappers, and any waste, or muda, that has accumulated.
• Remember the phrase 鈥渏耻蝉迟-颈苍-迟颈尘别鈥�听when Sorting through your office supplies. Keep only what you need to complete your daily tasks at your desk. Return all extra office supplies to the communal area.
• Purge the junk drawer. Get rid of expired snacks, dry pens and highlighters, loose paper clips, and random cords. If you haven鈥檛 used it in over a month, you probably don鈥檛 need it.

Next comes systematizing, which means creating a system for a particular space. Make sure there is a place for everything and that everything stays in its place. During this phase, think of your daily workflow. Keep items you use frequently easily accessible and items you use less often further away.

• For items that are placed on your desk, use washi or painter鈥檚 tape to create an outlined area for objects you want to have a designated home (like staplers or tape). Create a label for what is placed inside each outlined area. This increases efficiency since you won鈥檛 waste time searching for things you need.
• For supplies you don鈥檛 use daily, utilize drawer-sized bins or baskets to keep items separated and organized. Label each basket with the materials it holds so that you can easily replenish items once they have been used.
• Create a space for loose papers that need your attention. Use a paper tray labeled 鈥淚nbox鈥� for all your mail, invoices, contracts, and other important physical documents. That way they are placed in the same area to be checked and completed each day.

Once you have eliminated waste and created a systemized workflow, it鈥檚 time to test it out. As you spend the next few days in your tidy, new workspace, you鈥檒l notice inconsistencies or problems. Step 3, Shine, calls for refining these issues. Make sure to implement countermeasures as problems arise. For example, if you find yourself reaching to the right to grab the stapler, but it鈥檚 on the left side of your desk, now is the time to rehome it.

听

Once you have made your workspace Shine through the refinement process, take a photo for future reference. Your desk should look like the photo at the end of each workday.

Standardization ensures practices are efficient and successful, so that they can be duplicated to improve the performance of a process or task. Completing a task the same way each time allows you to find and address systemic breakdowns and to replicate continuous success. After ensuring your workstation is refined, continue practicing the processes that worked and do away with the processes that didn鈥檛.

The last step in the 5S System is all about consistency. Sustaining requires discipline to maintain what you have accomplished. To hold yourself accountable, set a calendar reminder for six months from now to conduct a self-audit. Look at the photo you took during the Seiso (Shine) step and see how your desk compares. Consider what processes are still working and what could be improved upon, then implement those changes.

听

If you think this is a lot of time to spend organizing your desk, keep in mind that this is an upfront investment that will continue to pay off鈥攊f you sustain it. For example, if this process increases your productivity by just five minutes a day, over the span of about 250 workdays per year, that鈥檚 almost 21 hours saved.

听

If you felt the 5S System was useful, apply it to your office and other business operations. Discover more about Toyota Lean Management.