101 Kaizen Templates: Workplace 5S Audit Sheet

Why would the world need another Workplace 5S Audit Sheet? Well, kaizen never ends, that’s why. Although it does rest sometimes.

On this 5S audit sheet, there are 10 questions, two in each of the five categories of 5S. You need to know a bit about 5S so that you can give a “tough” score. But even a beginner manager can use this form to audit an area.

Download the 5S Audit Worksheet

Look Beyond the Surface of 5S

This 5S audit sheet attempts to look at both the surface condition of the workplace and the apparent level of 5S as well as the processes that are in place to achieve and sustain that level of 5S. After all, even if it looks like perfect 5S today if the process that got you there was a mere herculean effort and a flurry of weekend red-tagging, it probably won’t last. The thinking behind 5S is missing. This sheet doesn’t go too deep into that thinking.

In fact, it aims to make it quick and easy for a manager or anybody to take a few minutes to ask 10 questions and rank the maturity of 5S of a workplace in an objective way.

Be Tough on Scoring

One rule of thumb we have learned when people first start doing 5S audits is that people will score themselves too high unless they have seen some world-class workplaces and have an image of their target condition for 5S. If not, subtract 0.5 to 1 point from your self-scored 5S audit and you might be about right.

We Did More 5S, So Why Did the Audit Scores Go Down?

Another curious phenomenon is that as you get better at 5S and become “more lean” through continuous improvement efforts, your 5S audit scores will go up, then go down, and then go up again eventually. This may repeat several times. The dip in scores is not because of backsliding (although that certainly can happen). The dip is because as people realize they were grading themselves too easily, they lower their scores on follow-up audits even though in fact their 5S has improved. This can send the wrong message, so it’s best to be as calibrated as possible in the early days or to bring in a tough auditor to score you closer to your reality.

Try out this 5S audit sheet and give us your feedback.

Even More 5S Resources

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