Title: 5S route for safety management

Authors: Nagarajan Ramesh; A. Ravi

Addresses: Anna University of Technology Coimbatore, 27 Vikas Nagar, 2nd Main, 1st Cross, Thally Road, Hosur – 635 109, Tamil Nadu, India ' Department of Management Studies and Research, Coimbatore Institute of Engineering and Technology, Narasipuram, Coimbatore – 641109, Tamil Nadu, India

Abstract: This article describes a research study conducted to examine the methodology adopted to achieve the safety sustainability at the organisation level. 5S is a systematic technique used by organisations; it comes from five Japanese words; Seiri (sort), Seiton (set in order), Seiso (shine), Seiketsu (standardise), and Shitsuke (sustain). This system helps to organise a workplace for efficiency and decrease waste. One of the very important aspects of today's organisation is to ensure and provide a safe workplace to their employees. This can be achieved only through the participation of all the employees of the organisation. This paper aims to understand the 5S practices of the leading cutting tool manufacturing company and how a safety system was incorporated within their organisation. The results of this research showed a strong relationship between 5S technique implementation and safety performance of the organisation. The results show that 5S is an effective tool for improvement of organisation's safety performance.

Keywords: 5S housekeeping; safety improvement; safety management; safe workplaces; safety performance.

DOI: 10.1504/IJBEX.2016.078670

International Journal of Business Excellence, 2016 Vol.10 No.3, pp.283 - 300

Received: 17 Oct 2014
Accepted: 17 Dec 2014
Published online: 01 Sep 2016 *

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