Workplace Organisation, more commonly known as 5S or even sometimes 5C, is a foundational tool in the Lean canon. Workplace Organisation is all about arranging your workplace around yourself, taking control and problem solving to make the workplace:

• Safer, by removing unnecessary items from the workplace and addressing hazards
• Efficient, by ensuring all items required are present and are intelligently placed to hand
• Effective, by making sure the environment that creates the product is at the correct standard for the product quality
• Productive, by removing as much of the 7 Wastes as possible
• Sustainable, by ensuring the new standard is easy to achieve and maintain.

Our approach for Workplace Organisation is a little different from the classical approach - we start by asking what is the purpose of the area being 5S'd. This means we are not undertaking Workplace Organisation for Workplace Organisation's sake, but to achieve a definite benefit or improvement through the application of 5S.

We are also focused on the cultural aspects of Workplace Organisation, as if this is not addressed the activity becomes a short term initiative which quickly dies. To drive cultural change one has to concentrate on a number of key elements:

• Processes and Systems
• Targets and Objectives
• Coaching and Mentoring

We have experience in addressing all three of these elements, and have developed a Workplace Organisation toolkit that addresses them all. That is not to say we have a standard out of the box solution, indeed we pride ourselves at taking the principles (and not the solution) and asking the question "how can we apply them here", adapting each and every time to suit your organisation.

Workplace Organisation is typically implemented through a small pilot area and then workshop to address the cultural requirements and design the supporting business systems either from scratch or more usually by integrating with and evolving existing processes and documentation.