Illinois Plastic Injection Molding company implements 5S Workplace Organization and Kaisen to eliminate wastes, improve productivity and efficiency, and boost employee satisfaction.

After understanding what Aztec Plastic wanted to accomplish and assessing their workspace, IMEC conducted a focused 5S workplace organization training and Kaizen over 2.5 days with 6-10 Aztec Plastic team members. 5S is intended to ultimately improve product quality and worker output, resulting in reduced cost and increased efficiencies. This training began with teaching the Aztec Plastic team the basic concepts of 5S – sort, set in order, shine, standardize and sustain (along with safety), including visual techniques to communicate progress and countermeasures.

In addition to the 5S principle, the team also learned how to apply visual techniques to help communicate the plan, progress, and countermeasures. These included shadow boards to organize tools and items in the area, labels to maintain visual order, visual procedures to assist in performing processes in a specific area, and visual measures to track performance. Since 2.5 days only allows so much time to properly implement 5S and Kaizen, an action plan was created with assigned responsibilities to the Aztec Plastic team with expected completion dates to ensure that all changes are implemented.

With all the tools and tooling components readily available, employees are now able to complete their jobs more efficiently. As a result, Aztec Plastic Company is noticing improved productivity and reduced waste, while also seeing an increase in employee satisfaction!