AN APPLICATION OF 5S CONCEPT TO ORGANIZE THE WORKPLACE AT A SMALL SCALE MANUFACTURING COMPANY

The purpose of the case study is to use 5S tool to assist small scale manufacturing organization to become more productive and more efficient. A simple approach has been adopted to create the teams for implementing 5S. In the frames of case study, it has been analyzed that implementation of ‘5S’ resulted in overall improvement of the organization. With the implementation of ‘5S’, major benefits in the form of tools searching time has been achieved. Tool searching time from shop floor has been reduced from 40 minutes to 5 minutes. ‘5S’ audit has been conducted in the organization. ‘5S’ audit score has been increased from 7 (week 1) to 56 (week 16). 5S is powerful tool and can be implemented in various industries whether it’s micro, small, medium or large. Implementation of 5S has large horizontal development and can be implemented in all the workstations of the organization. The publications and case study presented in this paper will be useful to researchers, professionals and others concerned with this subject to understand the significance of 5S.