APPLING 5S PROCEDURES
BY TEWODROS LULIE WONDIMU
KEY WORDS
OSH
PPE
ILO/WHO
5S
kaizen
Occupational Health and Safety (OHS)
Requirements of 5S
OHS requirements for kaizen 5S has no difference
from the previous ones. OHS requirements are
legislation/regulations/codes of practice and
enterprise safety policies and procedures. This may
include protective clothing and equipment, use of
tooling and equipment, workplace environment and
safety, handling of material, use of firefighting
equipment, enterprise first aid, hazard control and
hazardous materials and substances.
Personal protective equipment (PPE) include those
prescribed under legislation/ regulations/codes of
practice and workplace policies and practices. Safe
operating procedures include the conduct of
operational risk assessment and treatments
associated with workplace organization. Emergency
procedures include emergency shutdown and
stopping of equipment, extinguishing fires,
enterprise first aid requirements and site
evacuation.
• Occupational safety and health (OSH) also
commonly referred to as occupational health and
safety (OHS) or workplace health and safety (WHS)
is an area concerned with the safety, health and
welfare of people engaged in work or employment.
Occupational health and safety is a discipline with
a broad scope involving many specialized fields. It
encompasses the social, mental and physical well-
being of workers that is the “whole person”.
As per the definition adopted by the Joint ILO/WHO Committee
on Occupational Health (1950), occupational health is the
adaptation of work to man and of each man to his job. It has the
following components.
Promotion and maintenance of the highest degree of physical,
mental and social wellbeing of workers in all occupations;
• Prevention among workers of departures
from health caused by their working
conditions;
• Protection of workers in their employment
from risks resulting from factors adverse to
health; and
• Placing and maintenance of a worker in an
occupational environment adapted to his
physiological and psychological equipment
Occupational health and safety is a cross- disciplinary area and it
interacts with other disciplines such as occupational medicine,
occupational or industrial hygiene, public health, safety engineering,
ergonomics, toxicology, epidemiology, health physics,
environmental health, industrial relations, public policy, industrial
sociology, medical sociology, social law, labour law, and occupation
health psychology. Although the urgency to address the occupational
(industrial) health and safety issues emerged during the Industrial
Revolution, it becomes much more crucial to address the issue at
present with the tremendous expansion of cities across the world,
further resulting in wide spread industrialization and growth of
population
Occupational safety and health can be important for moral,
legal, and financial reasons. In common-law jurisdictions,
employers have a common law duty (reflecting an
underlying moral obligation) to take reasonable care for the
safety of their employees. Statute law may build upon this
to impose additional general duties, introduce specific
duties and create government bodies with powers to
regulate workplace safety issues: details of this will vary
from jurisdiction to jurisdiction. Good OSH practices can also
reduce employee injury and illness related costs, including
medical care, sick leave and disability benefit costs.
2. History
The origins of occupational health and safety concerns
can be traced back to the Industrial Revolution (late
18th to 19th century),
• As labor movements arose in response to worker
concerns in the wake of the industrial revolution,
worker's health entered consideration as a labor-
related issue.
• Across the world, Acts, legislations, and policies were
created with the objective of ensuring good health and
safe work environments for all workers. Every country
has its own act and policy on OHS.
2. Principles of Occupational Health and Safety
• Occupational health and safety is a multi-disciplinary field,
covering issues related to law, medicine, technology, economics
and industry specific concerns. The core occupational health and
safety principles put forth by the ILO are as follows:
[Link] workers have rights. Workers, as well as employees and
government, must ensure that these rights are protected and
foster decent conditions of labour.
[Link] health and safety policies must be established.
There is a need for consultation with the social partners (that is, employers and
workers) and other stakeholders.
Prevention and protection must be the aim of occupational health and safety
programs and policies.
Information is vital for the development and implementation of effective programs and
policies.
Health promotion is a central element of occupational health practice.
Occupational health services covering all workers should be established.
Compensation, rehabilitation and curative services must be made available to workers
who suffer occupational injuries, accidents and work related diseases.
Education and training are vital components of safe, healthy working environments.
Workers, employers and competent authorities have certain responsibilities, duties and
obligations.
Policies must be enforced.
[Link] hazards
An occupational or work place hazard can be
defined as any condition that may adversely affect
the well-being or health of the exposed persons.
Although work provides many economic and other
benefits, a wide array of workplace hazards also
present risks to the health and safety of people at
work. These include "chemicals, biological agents,
physical factors, adverse ergonomic conditions,
allergens, a complex network of safety risks," and
a broad range of psychosocial risk factors.
1
Occupational hazards can be divided into two
categories: safety hazards that cause accidents that
physically injure workers, and health hazards that
result in the developing of a disease. . It is
important to note that a “hazard” only represents
the potential to cause harm.
Physical and mechanical hazards
Physical hazards are a common source of injuries in
many industries. They are perhaps unavoidable in
certain industries, such as construction and mining,
but over time people have developed safety
methods and procedures to manage the risks of
physical danger in the workplace.
Employment of children may pose special problems.
Falls are a common cause of occupational injuries
and fatalities, especially in construction, extraction,
transportation, healthcare, and building cleaning
and maintenance.
A wood work workshop which includes welding of parts to
make furniture and its components has to use the
Personal Protective Equipment (PPE) at work. It is an
employer’s/workers duty to provide ‘all equipment
(including clothing affording protection against the
weather) which is intended to be worn or held by a
person at work which protects him against one or more
risks to his health and safety’. In a fabrication and welding
workshop an employer would be required to provide face
and eye protection, dust protection masks, hand gloves,
safety footwear, overalls and other necessary PPE.
4.1. Hazards at work place can be
related to the following but not limited
Machines are commonplace in many industries and many
machines involve moving parts, sharp edges, hot surfaces
and other hazards with the potential to crush, burn, cut,
shear, stab or otherwise strike or wound workers if used
unsafely. Various safety measures exist to minimize these
hazards, including lockout-tag out procedures for machine
maintenance and roll over protection systems for vehicles.
• According to the United States Bureau of Labor Statistics,
machine-related injuries were responsible for 64,170
cases that required days away from work and over 600
work-related fatalities in 2008.
Confined spaces also present a work hazard. The
National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health
defines "confined space" as having limited openings
for entry and exit and unfavorable natural
ventilation, and which is not intended for
continuous employee occupancy. Spaces of this kind
can include storage tanks, ship compartments,
sewers, and pipelines. Confined spaces can pose a
hazard not just to workers, but also to people who
try to rescue them.
• Noise also presents a fairly common workplace
hazard: occupational hearing loss is the most
common work-related injury in the United States,
with 22 million workers exposed to hazardous noise
levels at work and an estimated $242 million spent
annually on worker's compensation for hearing loss
disability. Noise is not the only source of
occupational hearing loss; exposure to chemicals
such as aromatic solvents and metals including lead,
arsenic, and mercury can also cause hearing loss.
• Temperature extremes can also pose a danger to
workers. Heat stress can cause heat stroke, exhaustion,
cramps, and rashes. Heat can also fog up safety glasses
or cause sweaty palms or dizziness, all of which
increase the risk of other injuries. Workers near hot
surfaces or steam also are at risk for burns.
Dehydration may also result from overexposure to
heat. Cold stress also poses a danger to many workers.
Over-exposure to cold conditions or extreme cold can
lead to hypothermia, frostbite, trench foot, or
chilblains.
• . Electricity:- poses a danger to many workers. Electrical
injuries can be divided into four types: fatal electrocution,
electric shock, burns, and falls caused by contact with electric
energy.
• Vibrating machinery, lighting, and air pressure (high or low)
can also cause work-related illness and injury. Asphyxiation is
another potential work hazard in certain situations.
Musculoskeletal are avoided by the employment of good
ergonomic design and the reduction of repeated strenuous
movements or lifts. Ionizing (alpha, beta, gamma, X, neutron),
and non-ionizing radiation (microwave, intense IR, RF, UV,
laser at visible and non-visible wavelengths), can also be a
2.1. Quality system
• A quality system is defined as the organizational
structure, responsibilities, processes, procedures
and resources for implementing quality
management. Quality management includes
those aspects of the overall management
function that determine and implement the
Company quality policy and quality objectives.
Both quality control and quality assurance are
parts of quality management.
What is Quality?
• There is no single, universal definition of quality.
Quality is a subjective term for which each person
has his or her own definition. In technical usage,
quality can have two meanings: (1) the
characteristics of a product or service that bear on
its ability to satisfy stated or implied needs and (2) a
product or service free of deficiencies.
• Let us see different definitions of quality
• Quality is the degree of excellence of something.
(Dictionary)
• Quality is fitness for use. (Juran)
• Quality is conformance to requirements/ specifications.
(Crosby)
• Quality should be aimed at the needs of the customer,
present and future. (Dr Edward Deming)
• Quality is what the customer says it is. Quality is the
degree of excellence at an acceptable price and control of
variability at an acceptable cost (Armand V. Feigenbaum)
• Different professionals give different
interpretations to the term quality:
– For users, it is fitness for use.
– For engineers, it is conformance to specifications.
– For marketing, it is the degree of excellence at an
acceptable price that will influence the market
share.
– For customer service, a quality product is that
with less customer complaint.
• A comprehensive definition of quality –
• Product or service which fulfils an aggregate
requirement of customers, in all aspects, at
present and in the future and which
customers can buy.
2.2. Quality Assurance
• Quality assurance, quality planning and quality
control are often used interchangeably to
describe the same processes. However, as you
get into the details of your plan, there are
differences between them that you should know.
• Quality assurance is the planned or systematic
action necessary to provide enough confidence
that a product or service will satisfy the given
requirements of quality.
• Quality control is the ongoing effort to maintain the
integrity of a process to maintain the reliability of
achieving an outcome.
• Quality assurance is process-oriented and focuses
on defect prevention. It is generic and does not
concern the specific requirements of the product
being developed. It refers to the process used to
create the deliverables, and can be performed by a
manager, client, or even a third party reviewer.
Quality assurance activitie
2.2.1. Components of Quality Assurance
• The components of a QA programs are often grouped
into three levels, variously labelled:
• the strategic or organizational level (dealing with the
quality policy, objectives and management and usually
produced as the Quality Manual);
• the tactical or functional level (dealing with general
practices such as training, facilities, operation of QA);
and
• The operational level (dealing with the Standard
Operating Procedures (SOPs) worksheets and other
aspects of day to day operations).
2.2.2. The Benefits of Quality Assurance
• Quality assurance offers a host of benefits to manufacturers
who choose to make it a priority. Three major benefits of
good quality assurance are:
1. Cost Savings
• Because QA is a proactive component of quality management,
good QA leads to the prevention of quality issues.
2. Efficiency Boosts
• With fewer defective products( furniture products),
manufacturers are able to allot resources such as time,
money, and warehouse space not only to creating more
quality furniture but also to other projects.
3. Improvements In Customer Satisfaction
Customers receive better products on faster timelines
and with greater levels of consistency when
manufacturers employ effective quality assurance
techniques.
The Meaning of Kaizen
Mr. Masaaki Imai is one of the Japanese people who
contributed to spreading of the term Kaizen
throughout the world. Mr. Imai today serves as the
president of a consulting company Cambridge
Research Institute. In his book entitled “Kaizen: The
Key to Japan’s Competitive Success’ published In
1986, defined Kaizen as “a Japanese business
philosophy that assumes our way of life – be it our
working life, our social life, or our home life –
should focus on continual improvement efforts”.
• Kaizen is a Japanese philosophy for
improvement that can be traced to the
meaning of the Japanese words ‘Kai’ and ‘Zen’,
which translate roughly into:
• ‘Kai’ - change, alter ‘zen’ - better,
right
The Three Pillars of Kaizen
• Masaaki Imai proposed Kaizen as “the unifying
thread running through the philosophy, the
systems, and problem solving tools developed
in Japan over the last 30 years”. The three
pillars of Kaizen are:
1. As a philosophy
2. Kaizen systems
3. Kaizen tools
1. Kaizen as a Philosophy
• Kaizen is a philosophy of continuous undertaking by
an organization to improve its activities and
processes with the goal to always improve Kaizen
elements: Productivity, Quality, Cost, Delivery time,
Moral, Safety, Environment and Gender equality
(PQCDMSEG) so that the organisation can meet full
customer satisfaction. Kaizen starts with the
recognition that any corporation has problems and
it solves these problems.
• Kaizen as a philosophy is built-in and run through
guiding principles. These guiding principles can be
summarized as follows:
• Proactive and spontaneous participation of front-line
workers (they are centre of Kaizen activities).
• Focus on the improvements of workplace/Gemba
(the foundation of all the improvement efforts). It is
a key entry to endless revolving activities of Kaizen.
• Practicing kaizen that lead to a corporate culture.
• Kaizen fosters process as well as result oriented
thinking.
• Speak with data - collect, verify and analyse
data.
• Put quality first even than cost and delivery.
• Bottom-up approach i.e. integrated total
company approach: genuine participation of
top management, middle managers and front-
line employees in a collaborative working
system throughout company organizations
• Continuous and endless activities in revolving
cycles of PDCA resulting in significant
improvements.
• Top management commitment.
• Learning process and customization
• Customer satisfaction
• Kaizen as a management strategy has its
characteristics. These are Kaizen has continuity, follows
participatory approach, accumulation of small
Improvement, applied using small investment and
widely applicable.
• Kaizen is a dynamic activity in revolving cycles of PDCA
(Plan, Do, Check and Act). Once a new improvement
becomes a new standard, the next cycle is set up to
seek further improvement. Kaizen is a continuous
challenge towards ever higher-level improvement,
cycle by cycle, without an end.
– Kaizen Systems
• Underlying the Kaizen strategy is the recognition
that management must seek to satisfy the customer
and serve customer needs if it is to stay in business
and make a profit. This Kaizen strategy has systems
that can be applied to realize planned goals and
targets. These systems include:
1. Toyota Production System
The Toyota Production system sometimes called the
Kanban system or Just in time. Just-in-time means that
the exact number of required units is brought to each
successive stage of production at appropriate time.
Kanban is a signboard or label used as a
communication tools in this system. It is attached to
each box of parts as they go to the assembly line.
Jidoka (autonomation) is when machines stop
automatically whenever a problem occurs. All
machines at Toyota are equipped with automatic stop
mechanisms.
• The Toyota production system is, in a nutshell,
a system which makes sure that the required
number of parts and components are
manufactured and forwarded to the final
assembly line so that final assembly does not
stop. It is a system that is still undergoing
change and improvement every day.
Total Productive Maintenance
• Total productive maintenance (TPM) is an
innovative Japanese concept which can be traced
back to 1951. TPM aims at maximizing equipment
effectiveness throughout the entire life of the
equipment. TPM can be considered as the medical
science of machines.
• The goal of TPM is the total elimination of all
losses. Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
allows to quantify the 6 major types of equipment
losses. These are:
[Link] are times when equipment breaks down due to
failure and isn’t available when we need it to be.
[Link] and adjustment losses occur when we’re working to
prepare equipment to run a different type of product. (e.g.
exchange of dies in injection molding machines, etc.)
[Link] and minor stoppages (abnormal operation of sensor etc.).
4. Reduced speed (discrepancies between designed and actual
speed of equipment)
5. Defects in process and rework (scrap and quality defects
requiring repair). These occur when our machines produce
defective products.
6. Reduced yield between machine startup and stable production.
Total Quality Control (TQC)
• Organized kaizen activities involving everyone in a
company- managers and workers- in a totally
integrated effort towards improving performance at
every level. This improved performance is directed
toward satisfying such cross-functional goals as quality,
cost, scheduling, manpowerdevelopment, and new
product development. It is assumed that these
activities ultimately lead to increased customer
satisfaction. It is equivalent to Company-Wide Quality
Control (CWQC).
•
Total Quality Management System
A number of management practices,
philosophies and methods to improve the way
an organization does business, makes its
products, and interacts with its employees and
customers. QCC activity functions as an
integral part of TQM. TQM was evolved from
TQC in the late 80s.
3.5 Kaizen Tools
• As presented by Masaaki Imai ,Kaizen is an
umbrella concept that embraces different
continuous improvement activities on an
organization as shown in the figure below . There
are a large number of related and often
overlapping implementation methods and
technical tools that belong to the kaizen Toolkit.
Basing on kaizen philosophy and through following
kaizen systems, Kaizen tools bring continuous
improvement.