What 5S is
Five Japanese words starting with S, each one a step: Seiri sort, Seiton set in order, Seiso shine, Seiketsu standardise, Shitsuke sustain. They come from Japanese production practice and are now used everywhere, from assembly lines to offices.
The idea is simple: keep only what you need, give everything its place, keep the place clean, make the rules the same for everyone, and have someone check they hold. The first three S are done with your hands, the last two with habits.
Why it matters more in a tool room
In any department mess wastes time. In a tool room it wastes machine time: the setup waits for the tool nobody can find, the presetter waits for the right holder, the operator waits for the cart.
- Search time: five minutes to find an end mill, multiplied by every setup, becomes hours of idle machines each month.
- Duplicates: what cannot be found gets reordered. Stock grows and so does tooling cost.
- Damaged tools: cutting edges knocking in a drawer, loose inserts, holders left on the bench chip and lose accuracy.
- Safety: a cutting edge left around is a cut hand.
1. Seiri · Sort
Start by removing, not arranging. Go through every cabinet, drawer and cart and put a red tag on everything not needed for today's work or the coming period.
- Worn or broken tools, inserts with every edge used.
- Special tools for jobs that are no longer run.
- Duplicates: three identical holders when only one is in use.
- Personal tools, empty boxes, old catalogues.
Red-tagged items go to a quarantine area for a fixed period, say one month. Whoever needs something takes it back; when the time is up you decide: regrind, return to stock with a code, scrap. Nothing is thrown away on impulse, and nothing stays "just in case".
2. Seiton · Set in order
Everything has a place, and the place is visible. The practical test: someone who does not work in the tool room should find a tool in under a minute.
- By family and code: cabinets and drawers ordered like your numbering. If the code is EM-0100-0001, end mills sit together, by diameter.
- Label the place, not just the item: the drawer says what it holds even when empty. Gaps show at once.
- Shadow boards: wrenches, collets and presetting tools on a panel with their outline drawn. An empty outline shows from across the room.
- Frequent items close: everyday tools at hand height, rare ones up high, heavy ones low.
- Holders in racks, all facing the same way, never stacked.
- Inserts in their box, with code and grade readable. A loose insert is a lost insert.
3. Seiso · Shine
In a tool room cleaning is not cosmetic: it is accuracy. A speck on the taper or the collet becomes a measuring error at the presetter and a tool running out in the machine.
- Tapers, collets and chucks cleaned before presetting, not after.
- The presetter bench clear: only the tool being measured.
- Carts and drawers free of chips and oil.
Cleaning is also inspecting: while you clean you see the scored taper, the marked collet, the chipped edge. Better on the bench than in the machine.
4. Seiketsu · Standardise
The first three S done once last a month. To make them stick you need rules that are the same for everyone, written and visible.
- A photo of the right state on every cabinet and cart: what it looks like when it is in order.
- Identical labels: same format, same printer, same code. Labels handwritten by ten different people are already a mess.
- Few colours, fixed meaning. For example green ready to use, yellow to be measured, red to regrind or check. Three colours are enough; nobody remembers ten.
- Solid tool numbering underneath: without a unique code per tool, no cabinet stays in order for long.
5. Shitsuke · Sustain
The hardest S, because hands are not enough. What works is a short, regular check, not a big clean-up now and then.
- A 10-minute round each week with a checklist and a 1 to 5 score per area.
- In rotation: a different person each week, so everyone sees through someone else's eyes.
- The score on the wall, with the weekly trend. It is not there to blame anyone: it shows if things are slipping.
- The lead sets the example: if the first to leave a tool on the bench is the supervisor, the rules are worth nothing.
An example: the setup cart
An invented but common case. Before: one cart per department, tools from different jobs mixed together, the operator walking back and forth to the tool room at every setup. After 5S:
- One cart per machine or machine group, with the number clearly visible.
- The next job prepared ahead: tools measured, green-tagged, in turret or magazine order.
- One shelf only for what comes back, yellow or red tagged.
- The photo of the right cart taped on its side.
The result is not a nicer cart: it is a setup that starts without searching for anything.
Common mistakes
- The big clean-up day: one great sort-out, then nothing. A month later it is back as it was.
- Doing 5S for others: if the tool room tidies cabinets without the people who use them, those people will not respect them.
- Too many colours and rules: the system must fit on one page.
- Sorting without deciding: the quarantine area turns into a second store.
- Labelling the item, not the place: when the tool is missing, nobody knows it is missing.
Printable checklist
- Only the tool being measured is on the presetter bench.
- Every drawer and shelf is labelled with its contents.
- No loose inserts: all in their box, code readable.
- Tapers and collets clean, racked, facing the same way.
- The shadow board is complete.
- Carts match the photo of the right state.
- Colour tags are the agreed ones, with the agreed meaning.
- No tool without a code.
- The quarantine area holds only dated, red-tagged items.
- This week's score is on the wall.