Cabinets and shelves
Cabinets and shelves are part of the business environment, in the workshops or office. These pieces of furniture have
to be part of the 5S discipline, and not be considered as convenient hiding places for leftovers and scrap!
Cabinets
From visual management and 5S point of view, cabinets have one weak point: solid doors.
These doors hide the cabinet content, its state of orderliness and restrain quick access to documents, tools,
or other items stored.
Closed doors do not allow to see from remote place nor immediately,
if a needed item, tool or document is at its. It is then necessary to
move to the cabinet, open it and... discover.
The tip for cabinets is to remove doors, to let the content be visible.
Once visible, content must comply to 5S rules:
If doors cannot be removed, could they be replaced by some transparent material (glass,
plexiglas, etc.)?
Shelves
Open shelves, made with uprights and plates, are visually and
FiveSly better than cabinets, as stored items remain visible from 4 open sides. Lack of sides and rear plates prevent from storing
slack items which could fall out.
As for cabinets, shelves content has to find its given place, depending on usage frequency.
Storage locations will be marked visually (shapes, outlines, colors, references, codes...) so that everyone can know
what is missing or where to place what they bring back.
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The author, Chris HOHMANN, is managing partner in a consulting firm.
He deals with industrial and logistics performance.
 Contact author
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This page is offered by ©hris HOHMANN - http://chohmann.free.fr/
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