Sustain: Turning 5S from a Project into a Culture Anyone can clean up a workspace for a week. The challenge is keeping it that way. “Sustain” is the fifth and final step in 5S—but in many ways, it’s the most important. It’s where Lean becomes culture, not just a checklist. To sustain 5S, teams need routines, leadership support, and visual tools that reinforce accountability every day. Visual…
CSS Editorial Staff | September 2, 2025 | 5S, Lean | 5S, 5S In Action, Continuous Improvement, Facility Efficiency, Labeling
Make It Stick: How to Standardize 5S Visuals for Long-Term Success Without standardization, even the best 5S efforts eventually fade. After you’ve sorted, set in order, and shined your workspace, the next step is to make those gains repeatable and scalable. Standardization is what transforms short-term wins into long-term systems. And visual tools—signs, labels, floor markings, and more—are what make that standardization stick. From Training to Daily…
CSS Editorial Staff | August 19, 2025 | 5S, Lean | 5S, 5S In Action, Facility Efficiency, Facility Marking, Labeling, Lean
Shine Isn’t Just About Clean—It’s About Control In the 5S system, “Shine” isn’t just about making your facility look good—it’s about creating a culture of care, ownership, and constant improvement. Daily cleaning becomes daily inspection. And every sweep, wipe, and polish is a chance to spot issues before they become problems. A clean facility is a safe facility—and visual systems are key to keeping it that way.…
CSS Editorial Staff | August 5, 2025 | 5S, Lean | 5S, 5S In Action, Continuous Improvement, Facility Efficiency, Facility Marking, Labeling
Creative Safety Supply was honored to have the opportunity to interview a Lean manufacturing expert. In this interview, Andrew McCall of Creative Safety Supply talks to Brion Hurley of Business Performance Improvement about the concept of 5S and its implementation in businesses. Brian discusses the eight wastes of Lean, emphasizing inventory as a commonly overlooked waste. He explains that while inventory is necessary for operations, it also…
CSS Editorial Staff | June 5, 2023 | 5S, Lean, Training | 5S, Facility Efficiency, Lean, Lean Culture, Lean Manufacturing, Six Sigma
Creative Safety Supply has recently revealed a new product line all about whiteboards! Dry erase boards are an excellent tool for encouraging collaboration between departments and employees. However, one of the best attributes whiteboards hold is the fact that they are most often used as an organizational tool. When we say organization, it isn’t just putting objects back where they were taken from. Organization is standardization. Organization…
Mackenzie Busby | September 8, 2021 | Company Updates | 5S, Continuous Improvement, Facility Efficiency, Healthcare, Kaizen, Kanban, Lean Manufacturing
You may not know it, but your facility could be losing hundreds of dollars every year in missing, misplaced, or stolen tools. By implementing a tool organization system in your facility, work is done more efficiently, a number of costs are saved, and you can be sure workers can easily find the tools they’re looking for. Before choosing a tool organization solution, you will want to sort…
Jesse Allred | January 16, 2020 | Lean, Safety Solutions | 5S, Facility Efficiency, Lean Manufacturing, Organized Workplace, Tool Organization
Gemba walks are a Lean management tool that fits in with many other Lean manufacturing concepts. The focus of a Lean manufacturing system in general is on identifying waste in work processes and eliminating it. That way only things that add value for the customer are performed or included. While a gemba walk can focus on many aspects of processes, it is possible to look for specific types…
CSS Editorial Staff | June 4, 2019 | Gemba, Lean | 5S, Facility Efficiency, Facility Marking, Gemba, Kaizen, Lean, Lean Manufacturing
For many businesses, it is not uncommon to spend thousands of dollars per year on the tools that are needed to get work done. Whether you run a mechanics garage, a construction company, a plumbing service, or any number of other things, the right tools are an absolutely essential part of doing business. Most people who own these types of businesses understand that it is sometimes necessary…
Tony Ferraro | April 24, 2017 | Product Spotlight | 5S, Facility Efficiency, Organized Workplace, Tool Organization
An interesting post was recently made by Doug Thompson in the EHSQ Elite Safety Group on LinkedIn, which prompted quite a thought provoking discussion. Mr. Thompson is a student at Columbia Southern University, and he titled his post, “Advice on how to be an effective safety professional.” He then wrote just one simple sentence, which was, “I am requesting “any positive” tips, tricks, insight, lessons learned, on…
Tony Ferraro | January 18, 2017 | Safety Solutions | 5S, Safety, Six Sigma
When learning the 5S methodology, the vast majority of the time spent will be on the first four S’s. The last S, which stands for Shitsuke, or Sustain, however, is almost certainly going to be the most important one. Without this S, all the others would quickly fall out of use, and the progress that a workplace makes would be lost. With this in mind, let’s take…
Tony Ferraro | January 16, 2017 | 5S | 5S, Sustain
When it comes to safe and efficient operation of a workplace, most people are used to reading Japanese terms like Kaizen, Gemba, Gembutsu, Kanban, and more. Many companies, however, overlook the term Yokoten, and the many benefits it can bring. Barry Jeffrey posted an interesting article to the LinkedIn Group, “Gemba Academy,” where it generated some interesting discussion and ideas. The article is titled, “The Art of…
Tony Ferraro | December 22, 2016 | Lean | 5S, Gemba, Kaizen, Kanban, Yokoten
Conventional wisdom suggests that the safety manager at a facility needs to be an expert on things like applicable OSHA regulations, incident rates, and safety patterns at the facility itself. While all of this may be true, Dr. Judith A. Erickson argues that their knowledge must be much broader than that in order to truly be improving safety. She shared an article titled, “Interdisciplinarity: Increasing Safety Performance”…
Tony Ferraro | December 19, 2016 | Safety Solutions | 5S, OSHA, Safety, Workplace Safety
When learning about the 5S program most people can quickly see how it can be helpful and improve efficiency in the facility. The whole strategy is quite easy when looking at it at a high level. If you’re not careful, however, it can get confusing with the actual implementation. This is because some of the “S’s” in the strategy aren’t quite as clear as they seem at…
Tony Ferraro | August 10, 2016 | 5S | 5S
The “Five Why’s” is a technique that is often used within the Six Sigma methodology to help learn more about a situation and gain valuable information about what is going on. While the strategy is called the Five Why’s, it doesn’t actually have to be exactly five. In some situations, fewer are needed and in others more may be necessary. Why the Five Why’s? The Five Why’s…
Tony Ferraro | May 12, 2016 | Lean | 5S, Five whys, Safety, Six Sigma
