Quality improvement supported by the 5S, an empirical case study of Mexican organisations

Abstract

Global markets are continuously changing and demanding customised, low cost, and high quality products and services; organisations that offer these products and services are dealing with these issues on a daily basis to stay competitive. Among the quality tools used to achieve competitive advantage, the 5S practice plays an important role facilitating the introduction and development of other quality and continuous improvement methods and techniques. We present results of an empirical study applied to some Mexican organisations with the aim of understanding their implementation experience, empirical relationships, and ongoing challenges associated with the 5S practice.

Keywords:

• 5S
• 5S principles
• 5S practice
• quality improvement

Acknowledgements

We are grateful to the Tecnológico de Monterrey Campus Hidalgo for partial funding of this research. We also acknowledge the three anonymous reviewers and the editor for valuable comments and insights.