Benefits Of Implementing 5”S” In Office Last Friday, I entered my office stores along with one of my colleagues to do a random inventory check of the items to be replenished. This is a routine activity where I dedicate an hour every Friday at four p.m.to check the items and tick off my list. My Store contains more than 100 items consisting all kinds of stationery – paper reams,clips, laser pointers, stop watches, t-shirts etc. But today along with the inventory check, I had decided to organize a box full of CDs and DVDs collected over the years by various Lean Practitioners. So, I had come prepared – my checklist for inventory management helped me calculate the items to be replenished. The other items I had brought with me were for organizing the collection of CDs-DVDs – a few cardboard boxes to keep the segregated items, special cleaning liquid and a few pieces of microfiber cloth. The CDs and DVDs are a very delicate resource which need to be handled carefully. So here’s what I did! I decided to do some sorting first. I carefully separated the discs and started arranging and categorizing them roughly keeping them in different boxes. Then I cleaned all of them one by one using the special liquid and the microfiber cloth. Cleaning is not just dusting or washing the items, it is also a chance to inspect the items to reveal the abnormalities in it. Accordingly, I kept looking for the damaged ones and then I replaced the covers which were broken. The discs which had enough scratched were tested and separated from the lot.
In the process of cleaning the discs we were also reading the name written on the top for identification. It became Cleaning with Meaning. We were amazed to see many valuable stuff. I found presentations on various topics, short films and videos shot at the shop floor, Case Studies on productivity, Quality, etc., videos and photographs of Mahatma Gandhi and much more valuable stuff. The content left me dumbfounded. Later when I shared these detail swith my colleagues, they too, were astonished. One of them appreciated for providing the right material for a training film that he was making. What could have become better than this that I did something and it proved useful to somebody else! Isn’t this a cosmic co-operation!