The 5‐S auditing

It has been recognised that Japanese firms are clean and orderly. The same is true for high quality western firms. Over the last two decades, the Japanese have formalised the technique and named it 5‐S practice. As the name is new to most western societies, the objective of this paper is to explain the intricacy of the 5‐S so that it can be understood easily and adopted readily by those who may find the tool useful. Based on the Japanese experience, the author has developed the world’s first 5‐S audit checklist. Apparently, spearheaded by the ISO 9000 auditing, the 5‐S auditing approach has been easily and readily accepted by businesses and industries. As a result of the success, the Hong Kong Government invited the author to commission a 5‐S Practice Workbook with ten successful case studies from the manufacturing, services and public sectors. Further, a grant has been given to the author to train up 2,500 5‐S lead auditors, the first of its kind in the world. The experience will also be shared in this article.