5S is a Japanese methodology to organize and improve the efficiency of a shared workspace by incorporating seemingly regular tasks such as cleaning, sorting, and re-arranging the surroundings and method of operation within the workspace. 5S consists of five phases or activities with names starting with the letter S, and provides a foundation for any organization's Lean initiative for continuous improvement. This paper documents a case study undertaken by the author to implement 5S in whole plant of an automotive parts manufacturing company. The study focused on implementing 5S and documents results in form of photographs & 5S score of the plant. The study also assesses its own approach and serves as a platform for achieving tangible and intangible gains in productivity. The study simplifies the application of 5S. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the applicability of 5S Technique in automotive parts manufacturing organization using a case-based approach. The research is administered with personal interviews, primary, secondary data and observations. The findings revealed that 5S technique could be applied to automotive industries in order to reduce unnecessary motion, can save shop floor’s space, & can improve overall visualization / visual controls of the organization. This paper focuses on steps and activities carried out to implement the 5S technique in the company, which have the less visual controls for inventory, standard’s awareness to operators, unnecessary materials, lack of arrangement, Poor cleaning etc. (Initial study of the plant was done earlier through Value Stream Mapping Technique) The outline of this paper is: Section 1 provides overview of 5S Technique. Section 2 introduces problems and scope of work. Section 3 describes the steps and procedures used to implement 5S. Section 4 analyses the outcome of this implementation in form of photographs & before after 5S audit score.
Vikas Singla (Sun,) studied this question.