Practical TPM and Maintenance Excellence – Part 2: How the Five Steps of 5S Support Maintenance Performance

In the first part of this series, we looked at why 5S is not a housekeeping project, but a practical foundation for Total Productive Maintenance (TPM).

In this second part, we move from the TPM structure to the shop floor: what Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seiketsu and Shitsuke mean in daily maintenance work.

The value of 5S does not come from making the workplace look clean. Its value comes from making abnormal conditions visible earlier. An oil leak, a missing tool, an unclear inspection point, a dirty machine or an unstable routine may look like a small issue — until it turns into a production disturbance, a quality loss or downtime.

In maintenance and production, 5S becomes a practical way of working. It gives people a clearer work environment and helps them detect abnormal conditions before they grow into larger problems.

Pentti Enlund explains in this article how the five steps of 5S support equipment reliability, safety, daily inspections and maintenance performance.

5S as a foundation for TPM

5S was developed in Japan in the 1960s and has since become one of the main tools in almost every continuous improvement programme.

5S acts as a foundation for World Class Manufacturing. It supports Total Quality Management, Lean production principles and Total Productive Maintenance.

It is worth noting that 5S is a step-by-step, common-sense approach to organising any workplace by involving the people who work there in improving their own work. I have discussed 5S and its tools more thoroughly in earlier articles. In this article, the focus is on how 5S supports TPM and its pillars.

The five steps of 5S and their connection to TPM

5S forms the foundation of the entire TPM process. It creates a systematic, clean and safe work environment where maintenance work, inspections and problem detection become easier and more effective.

Without 5S, other TPM areas, such as autonomous maintenance, do not work properly. 5S is the seed from which TPM grows. It creates the basic conditions for effective maintenance, failure prevention and continuous improvement.

If 5S is missing, TPM easily remains superficial. The process starts to suffer from disorder, unclear responsibilities, inconsistent routines and work methods that cannot be repeated reliably.

Practical point: 5S does not eliminate waste by itself. It makes waste, risks and abnormal conditions visible early enough so that people can act before the situation becomes expensive.

Figure 2. The five-step 5S process.

1. Seiri – Sort

Seiri means separating necessary items from unnecessary ones and removing what is not needed from the work area.

In practice, this applies to tools, spare parts, materials, measuring equipment, consumables, documentation, temporary items and anything else that may disturb the work or hide an abnormal condition.

From a TPM perspective, sorting helps reduce waste and improves maintainability. When unnecessary items are removed, equipment is easier to see, maintenance points are easier to access, tools are easier to find and early signs of problems are easier to detect.

In maintenance work, unnecessary items are not just a visual problem. They can cause delays, safety risks, wrong tool choices, poor inspection quality and wasted time during troubleshooting.

Maintenance impact

• Reduces time spent searching for tools, parts and materials.
• Improves access to equipment and maintenance points.
• Reduces the risk that leaks, wear, cracks or loose parts are hidden under clutter.
• Creates a better starting point for autonomous maintenance and daily inspections.

2. Seiton – Set in Order

Seiton means arranging everything that remains in a clear and logical way. The basic idea is simple: a place for everything, and everything in its place.

In production and maintenance environments, this means that tools, spare parts, lubrication points, inspection aids, cleaning tools, measuring equipment and documentation are placed where they are needed and marked so that missing items are immediately visible.

From a TPM perspective, setting things in order supports faster maintenance, shorter downtime and more reliable troubleshooting. When the right tool or part can be found immediately, the maintenance person can focus on the actual problem instead of wasting time searching and clarifying.

Seiton also supports safer work. Poorly placed tools, hoses, materials or temporary items increase the risk of mistakes and accidents. Clear order reduces unnecessary movement and makes the work area easier to control.

Maintenance impact

• Shortens the time needed for repair, inspection and installation work.
• Supports troubleshooting by reducing unnecessary disturbance and searching.
• Makes missing tools, parts or materials visible.
• Supports repeatable work routines and safer execution.

3. Seiso – Shine

Seiso means thoroughly cleaning the workplace and the equipment. In TPM, cleaning is not just cleaning. It is inspection.

A clean machine makes abnormal conditions easier to detect. Oil leaks, grease leaks, loose bolts, worn parts, cracks, unusual dust patterns, overheating marks and damage are much easier to see when the equipment is clean and accessible.

This is one of the most important links between 5S and maintenance performance. Many failures give early warning signs before they stop production. If the machine is dirty, these warning signs may remain hidden until the fault has already developed too far.

Seiso also increases operators’ familiarity with their equipment. When operators clean and inspect their own machines regularly, they learn what normal condition looks like. This makes it easier to notice small changes in sound, vibration, temperature, leaks, movement or product quality.

Maintenance impact

• Makes leaks, wear, cracks, looseness and damage visible earlier.
• Improves the quality of daily inspections and autonomous maintenance.
• Helps operators understand the normal condition of the machine.
• Supports early reaction before a small abnormality becomes downtime.

Maintenance rule: In TPM, cleaning should never be treated as cosmetic work. Cleaning is one of the simplest ways to inspect the condition of equipment.

4. Seiketsu – Standardise

Seiketsu means creating clear standards and routines to maintain the achieved level of order, cleanliness and basic equipment condition.

Without standardisation, 5S depends too much on individual people. One shift works one way, another shift works differently, and the same workplace slowly drifts back into disorder. This weakens maintenance reliability and makes abnormal conditions harder to identify.

Standardisation turns good practices into a common way of working. It defines what must be checked, where tools and materials belong, how cleaning and inspection are carried out, what normal condition looks like and how abnormalities are reported.

From a TPM perspective, standardisation enables consistent maintenance quality and reduces the risk of errors. It also supports training, onboarding and competence development, because the expected way of working is visible and repeatable.

Maintenance impact

• Creates repeatable inspection, cleaning and basic maintenance routines.
• Reduces variation between people, shifts and departments.
• Improves knowledge transfer and makes abnormal conditions easier to communicate.
• Supports training and competence development for operators and maintenance personnel.

5. Shitsuke – Sustain

Shitsuke means sustaining the achieved level and improving it continuously. This is often the most difficult part of 5S.

Many organisations can clean and organise a workplace once. The real challenge is to maintain the standard when production pressure, urgent repairs, personnel changes and daily disturbances start pushing people back into old habits.

From a TPM perspective, sustaining ensures that 5S remains part of daily work and does not become a short campaign. It requires leadership, follow-up, clear expectations and the discipline to react when the level starts to decline.

Sustaining 5S also requires people to understand why it matters. If 5S is presented only as cleanliness, commitment remains weak. If people see that 5S helps prevent failures, improve safety, shorten downtime and make work easier, it becomes more meaningful.

Maintenance impact

• Keeps basic conditions stable over time.
• Prevents the workplace from slowly drifting back into disorder.
• Strengthens operator involvement and equipment condition control.
• Supports long-term TPM implementation and continuous improvement.

Why 5S matters for maintenance performance

The practical value of 5S can be seen in how quickly abnormal conditions are detected and how consistently people react to them. A clean, organised and standardised workplace does not improve production by itself, but it makes problems visible.

For maintenance, this is a decisive point. When a fault is detected early, it can be turned into an observation, a conclusion and an improvement action before it becomes an expensive failure.

Good 5S also improves the quality of communication between operators, maintenance personnel, supervisors and engineers. When the workplace is clear and standards are visible, people can discuss facts instead of assumptions.

This is also important for competence development. Less experienced people learn faster when the work environment shows what normal looks like and where abnormalities should be found. Experienced people can use the same structure to transfer practical knowledge to others.

Conclusion

5S is not a side activity outside the actual production process. It is part of how an organisation protects production capacity, improves reliability and creates the basic conditions for TPM to work.

When 5S is implemented properly, the workplace starts to tell the truth earlier. Leaks, missing items, unsafe conditions, weak routines and early failure signals become visible before they grow into larger losses.

That is an important step in TPM thinking. First, the organisation creates conditions where problems can be seen. After that, it needs a measure that shows how much production capability is actually being lost.

In the next article, we move to Overall Equipment Effectiveness, or OEE. We will look at how downtime, minor stops, speed losses and quality problems reveal the real losses in production — and how the impact of maintenance can be made visible in concrete terms.

Pentti Enlund
MexLink Oy