National Clean Off Your Desk Day - Let's talk about 5S!
Today is National Clean Off Your Desk Day and it’s a great time to reassess your workspace and organize any chaos and clutter. At Portescap, we’ve determined that the 5S tool is the best tool to help restore order to your desk and creat
e an efficient workspace. 5S is a foundation of the Altra Business System, our set of tools that helps us drive towards satisfying the customer needs.
5S is a process to ensure a clean, orderly, safe and productive workspace, i.e. there’s a place for everything and everything in its place. 5S is based on principles starting with the letter “S” – Simplify, Straighten, Scrub, Stabilize and Sustain.
Simplify: The first stage of 5S is to sort or simplify. This means going through each item on your desk and deciding what is necessary and what is not. Discard any items that don’t add value or help you complete your job. Everything on, in, and under your desk should be examined during this process.
Straighten: Next comes straightening. This means creating a system for a particular space. Ideally, you want to keep things you use frequently in handy, easy to reach locations and things you rarely use in drawers or further away.
Scrub: After straightening, the next step is to clean, tidy and fix any problems with your work desk or items on your desk.
Stabilize: The stabilizing step is about creating a system to ensure the optimized desk is maintained. To do this, set daily, weekly, and monthly goals to keep your desk in its ideal state.
Sustain: The final step involves achieving the discipline or habit of properly maintaining what you have done with your desk and also constantly striving to improve.
5S seems simple, but is a challenge to implement well and is difficult to sustain! We challenge you this year to 5S your space and make a personal goal to maintain it.
