My foot in the door at Hewlett-Packard Company was a step down from an engineering position to a technician role. As I was moving from the field of radiation safety to software development, with no real software development experience, it was a reasonable approach. The real value of this was that it afforded a Genchi Genbutsu approach to performance improvement.
5S is one of the key practices of the Toyota Production System. The 5 “S’s” derive from five Japanese words which when romanized, begin with the letter ‘S’: Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seiketsu, and Shitsuke.
The Japanese word Seiso translates to cleanliness. There is no doubt that cleanliness of a workspace can contribute to efficiency, safety and a positive work environment (see the broken window theory). But substituting “shine” for Seiso because it is an English word which begins with the letter ‘S’, risks a literal interpretation which results in none of those outcomes. A good example of taking “shine” too literally comes from my Navy experience and in particular, the use of Epoxy-Polyamide paint.
5S is one of the key practices of the Toyota Production System. The 5 “S’s” derive from five Japanese words which when romanized, begin with the letter ‘S’: Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seiketsu, and Shitsuke.
The English word Straighten is frequently used as the translation of the Japanese word (romanized as) Seiton. Often the literal interpretation of this principle is taken as a mandate for the use of shadow boards. While that may be appropriate in some contexts, it may just as likely miss the point.
