CONTAGIOUS 5S HABIT BY: Hazel Claro, Have you ever wondered what it’s like to live or work in a dirty environment? A place where everything is such a mess? As for me, Just the thought of it makes me sick! I couldn’t even imagine staying there for a minute or two. But I strongly believe, nothing’s impossible, I can surely make it a better place for me to stay or work. Where do I begin? First, in my own home, where maintenance is quite easy because I have been living there for years, and mastered almost all of the corners in it, including the furniture and fixtures hanging around; where I myself am the auditor in it. Second, is the place where I spend eight (8) hours of my life (sometimes, more than), everyday, six to seven days a week, one that I consider my “second home”, is non other than my work place, here at Texas Instruments Philippines, particularly, the test area, Fusion. In here, there are rules, standards, and procedures that I must heartily follow. I can not just put anything to anywhere at anytime. How do I begin? Simply by Sorting. Sorting, for me means that process of arranging items and/or in different sets, accordingly. It has two (2) common, yet distinct meanings. The first one is ordering. Ordering is when I arrange the items of the same kind, class or nature. Some examples in my work area that I can share is that I always make sure that all good trays are separated from the reject trays and vice versa; black trays, from green ones; tested lots from the untested ones; the way I do when I sort the good units from the reject ones by assigning the proper categories on my handler. Second is categorizing. Categorizing is when I group and label the items with similar properties together. A perfect example is my worktable. In here, everything is, and must be labeled accordingly. After arranging my good trays, I place them in one of the corners of my worktable labeled as “Trays for Good units”. Red trays and yellow trays are likewise, separated and properly labeled. The canisters for tools, lot tags, finger cots and rubber bands are also in their labeled places. Every first hour in my work, I see to it that all of these are in their designated places. When I needed something very badly, I need not to think twice where that item might be, because I perfectly knew where to find it. I can see clearly now shy 5S should be implemented in my system, that all the things I considered small, but properly defined, can make a BIG DIFFERENCE. The tagline “When in doubt, Move it out!” has a great impact in me and in my work. I learned to value the things I need to complete the job and “move out” the things I don’t necessarily need. Sorting therefore, taught me to be organized in a lot of ways. It also helped optimize all my things’ usefulness for specific tasks. So. Do you think sorting is still impossible? Think again! I am not hesitant at all that 5S should be strongly implemented not only in our company, but to other companies as well, from big to small. If someone might as me if I can do 1S, My answer would definitely be, “Certainly, I can!”