On February 29, 2016, a few volunteers in Business Office participated in an office 5S event to improve our office supply storage space and reduce waste. 5S is an organizational tool used to eliminate waste and provide a place for everything and a system to keep everything in its place!
The 5 s’s are:
- Sort – get rid of the things you don’t need!
- Set in order – find the best place to put the things you do need.
- Shine – clean the area
- Standardize – develop standard labeling, best practices, color coding etc.
- Sustain – develop a way to sustain the work done!
Everything is labeled and much easier to find, and space was freed up for better uses.
Some of the benefits we are enjoying now because of our 5S event are:
- Staff learned about 5S and the benefits of implementing it
- More space was made available for the things we need to stock
- Items are labeled and quick to identify saving time
- Obsolete items were removed
- Red tagged items were shared with others that could utilize them
- Saving money
Our next steps going forward are to:
- Disposition any remaining items we removed from the SORT
- Document min max levels on the items we store
- Develop a schedule of ordering items that reach their minimum level trigger point
- Develop an office 5S audit and schedule
- Discuss possibly expanding the scope of the 5S efforts from just the office supplies area to include other common areas such as meeting rooms and break areas.
Thanks to Ann Noska, Sandy Bunce, Tara Dietiker, Pam Kray and Steve Forbes for taking the time for this event. Also the input from others unable to join for the event was helpful. It’s a huge improvement and the supply closet looks great!