6S Workplace Organisation

6S is a simple business improvement process that drives and maintains excellent workplace organisation. It is considered by many to be the most important step a company can take in improving productivity, safety and compliance to standards. 5S is the more recognised term in industry but we have followed the lead of the NHS and use the term 6S to emphasise safety.

Our Approach

6S is more than simply housekeeping. It is fundamental to the running of an efficient shop-floor, office or ward. Ideally 6S activity becomes second nature within your organisation, but this level of culture change can take time.

A sure way to accelerate change of this type is through demonstration. After initial 6S training we suggest you focus effort in a pilot area, and prove the benefits before a roll-out to other areas. We also advocate the use of the Kaizen Blitz/Rapid Improvement Event approach to introduce 6S to any new area. This will kick-start the process by making changes and ensuring the area is geared-up for sustainability, all within four days.

The 6S steps:

Safety: Catalogue and take immediate action on anything impacting safety.

Sort: Remove all clutter and unnecessary items.

Set in Order: Ensure you have “a place for everything and everything in its place”. This will reduce time spent searching for the items you need such as tools, materials, stationery, documents, drugs or electronic files.

Shine: Ensures your working environment is in showroom condition every day. Not only kept clean, but proactively checked for errors, anomalies, breakages, problems, etc.

Standardise: Define all the activity that is required to maintain the conditions established by completing the first four S’s. Standards are defined and made visual with clear ownership and accountability.

Sustain: This activity is geared around mindset and attitude, and seeks to provide clear evidence that the first five S steps are being maintained and continuously improved. It is the attitude of management that leads the way. This is only accomplished through “managing by walking about” and seeing the abnormalities in the process.

Who’s involved

The people who work in an area are the people who can best define how that area should be organised. Under the guidance of a Ross International facilitator, they will be empowered to radically improve layout and the location of key equipment, materials, data and information. Key leaders need to be involved to ensure any barriers to continuous improvement can be removed, and to understand how to support sustainability of the results.

The benefit to you

Having a safe, well organised, well ordered, clean, standardised and efficient workplace has proven to be the foundation for a multitude of organisations who have become world class.

A well laid out workplace means anomalies and defects are instantly detected. As a result, a 6S workplace is an efficient workplace. In addition, health and safety performance usually improves, with incidents and accidents reduced due to a better layout.

6S improves the feel and look of an area, making for a more pleasant working environment. With the team from the area engaged and empowered, with ownership for making and sustaining changes, improvements accelerate, and morale is high. If people are told to do something, you might succeed. If people want to do something, you will succeed.