
The five processes can be broken down into two stages. The first being the action stage where physical effort is required to clear up, arrange to order and keeping everything spic-and span; the second stage which concentrates on managing and maintaining the results and conditions from the first stage and sustaining a constant ‘growth rate’ of continuous improvement.
The content of this fifth process was already written in my previous 5-part blog posts entitled ‘Positive thinking’. Please read them if you’ve not read them. A positive mindset is simple to acquire if you decide to take immediate actions on things that can be accomplished within 2 to 3 minutes first, listing them as priority in your daily do list. If you make it a point to act 10 minutes at the beginning of your day, 10 minutes when you resume after lunch and 10 minutes at the end of your day, you got 30 minute to focus on items that need immediate actions. Within this period you could easily complete 10 to 15 simple but necessary items for the day leaving you with ample time to concentrate on meetings, discussions and jobs that require interaction with others. These actions will leave your ‘in’ bin empty every day before retiring for the day.
The 5 processes which I mentioned is popularly know as 5S activities, namely;
1. Seiri (Cleaning / clearing up)
2. Seiton (Arrange to order)
3. Seiso (Shining or Spic-and-span)
4. Seiketsu (Operational standard of the system in placed)
5. Shitsuke (Positive attitude of team members)

As I indicated earlier, items 1 to 3 are actions that require physical efforts and some form of creativity, item 4 is making the working conditions suitable, comfortable and safe, and the final item 5 is ‘fine tuning’ our attitude and mindset towards achieving the vision of the group or the organization that we belong to.
For further read up on the processes that I wrote please do a Google search on ‘5s activities, lean manufacturing, kaizen’. Happy reading.