Five-minute Story on 5S by

K D Bhardwaj

DID YOU LEARN 5S?

A Japanese 5S expert was teaching 5S to a group of productivity professionals. The group consisted of 20 people including managers, consultants, technicians, and productivity trainers. All of them were confident that they knew 5S very well. However, they were sent for this 7-day training given by a renowned 5S expert from Japan. An Idea of learning 5S directly from the Japanese expert made them convinced to attend 7-day long 5S training program which in their view was not necessary and was long enough. Another attraction to attend this training was the luxurious accommodation in a popular 5 star hotel.

DID YOU LEARN 5S?

The Japanese expert was good and he was teaching 5S as if the audience had no idea of 5S. It was like learning 5S from the scratch and some of the participants felt bored and irritated as they already conducted similar 5S training number of times and some of them even helped in implementation of 5S in several organizations. They thought the Japanese expert was too naïve to understand that he was teaching learned people. They wanted the Japanese expert to share 5S case studies from Japan rather than delving on basic fundamentals of 5S.

DID YOU LEARN 5S?

It was 9:00 am Saturday morning, Day 6 of 5S training program and the Japanese expert surprised everyone with a pleasing announcement that he was going to share best-of-the-best case studies on 5S from Japan. He went on saying that they had already spent 5 days to understand each “S” of 5S. Then the Japanese expert said “I would like to ask a question to all of you before I proceed to case studies”. All were kind of smiling to this announcement by the expert and were ready to answer his question. The expert asked loudly ”Did you learn 5S?”. “Of course” all said in a chorus.

DID YOU LEARN 5S?

“All right then, let’s do one thing” the expert said. All were surprised and keen to know what to do next. The expert said “Hand over key of your room to the person sitting next to you and let him/her go to check your room and see how well you understand and do 5S” All were puzzled and did not dare to handover a key knowing very well the room was cluttered after 5-day stay and it was not even time for the house-keeping to clean the room. Observing a clear hesitation, the Japanese expert said “5S is not just about knowing it but it is about doing it and doing it so very well that it becomes an attitude!!!”

DID YOU LEARN 5S?