Strategic implementation of 5S and its effect on productivity of plastic machinery manufacturing company

ABSTRACT

5S is one of the major foundations of lean concept along with total productive maintenance and standard work. 5S is the approach of improving business, establishing stability in operation by eliminating the root causes of wastes or defects in business process or operation and thereby making continuous improvement and sustaining it. 5S helps the organisations in establishing framework and roadmap to successfully follow the path of lean manufacturing for continuous improvement as it exposes visible and critical waste of the process. This paper presents the study of implementation of strategic 5S at plastic machinery manufacturing company in India and determines the relationship of 5S and productivity by testing hypothesis. This study is also an example for SMEs which reveals the prospective of 5S to achieve business performance parameters.

KEYWORDS:

• 5S
• lean
• six-sigma
• productivity improvement
• lean product development

Acknowledgments

We are thankful and express our gratitude to the top management of surveyed company who helped us to implement 5S system with useful information and suggestions. Electronic, photocopying, mechanical, microfilming, or any other kind of reproduction of full or partial use of this content is strictly prohibited if there is no prior written consent of authors.

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the authors.