5S impact on safety climate of manufacturing workers

Abstract

Purpose – 5S is a commonly used Lean tool that focusses on creating an organized work environment, but the effects of 5S on safety climate are not as well studied. The purpose of this paper is to determine the impact of a 5S event on safety climate. Design/methodology/approach – This pre-test post-test study examines the effect of implementing 5S on safety climate of the packaging area of a manufacturing plant. Two groups of employees (case and control groups) completed a safety climate questionnaire (Safety Climate Assessment Toolkit) prior to the 5S event, one month after, and two months after. Findings – Total safety climate significantly improved for the case group but remained unchanged for the control group over the study period. Specifically, management commitment and involvement dimensions of safety climate improved for the case group. Practical implications – These results show that two important aspects of safety climate (management commitment and involvement) can be significantly, positively influenced by successful 5S events, which may translate to improved safety overall. Originality/value – Prior literature on 5S speculates a positive impact of 5S on safety and safety climate, but this assertion is not well supported with empirical evidence. This study provides quantitative measurement of positive safety climate changes that resulted from a successful 5S event. The results provide additional incentive for management to continue 5S and other Lean activities with the possibility of also improving safety.

Intention to Implement 5S Management Among Students in Higher Education Institutions

“…5S practices is very important because it can help organizations to reduce costs by maximizing process efficiency, effectiveness and performance through the establishment and maintenance of a high-quality, clean working environment (Suárez-Barraza and Ramis-Pujol, 2012; Hirano, 1995;Ho, 1999;Liker, 2004;Liker and Hoseus, 2008). Therefore, study by Srinivasan, et al (2016) show that two important aspects of safety climate (management commitment and involvement) can be significantly, positively influenced by successful 5S events, which may translate to improved safety overall. Gupta and Chandna (2020) analyze the implementation of 5S in a scientific equipment manufacturing company and found that the organization become progressively beneficial and increasingly productive.…”

Continuous Improvement Through Lean using VSM for Application in Machining Based Product Company

“…The reason is that in high demand periods company always focuses on the case, the plant manager is overwhelmed and is more concerned about meeting customer delivery times rather than maintaining an orderly plant [25]. If the problems of 5S were not well conducted, safety risks may cause injury [26]. The current research aimed at assessing the effects of a 5S event on safety in a production environment by comparing all employees involved in batch processing.…”

Improvement of steel melting operations at a Caribbean company: a lean manufacturing approach

“…Moreover, Khamis et al (2009) demonstrated the use of 5S checklist for better housekeeping in terms of preserving health, safety and environment in a manufacturing firm. Further, by implementing 5S principles, the levels of quality, lead time, and cost reduction can be improved (Gadzik, 2009;Chowdary and George, 2012;Kumar et al, 2014;Srinivasan et al, 2016;Chowdary et al, 2016;Setianto and Haddud, 2016;Sajan et al, 2017;Chowdary et al, 2018).…”

“…• For reduction of process wastes, various LM tools such as 5S, PS, TPM, super market concept, setup time reduction, etc. are implemented widely across variety of industries (Abdullah, 2003;Gadzik, 2009;Monden, 2012;Srinivasan et al, 2016;Bevilacqua et al, 2017;Chowdary et al, 2018).…”

“…Lean manufacturing (LM) is one such initiative where companies focus on elimination of process wastes to reduce overall cost of production (Watson, 2006;Bhasin and Burcher, 2006;Ruffa, 2008;Wan and Chen, 2008;García-Alcaraz et al, 2014;Chowdary et al, 2016;Bevilacqua et al, 2017;Chowdary et al, 2018). The application of LM tools and techniques have been spanned several sectors such as automotive, textiles, pharmaceutical and food manufacturing by showing variety of benefits to the organisations (Upadhye et al, 2010;Chowdary and George, 2012;Ghosh, 2013;Kumar et al, 2014;Yusup et al, 2016;Srinivasan et al, 2016;Setianto and Haddud, 2016;Sajan et al, 2017;Tortorella and Fettermann, 2018;Dhiravidamani et al, 2018).…”