(mellow music) In Lean Six Sigma leadership, various standards must be met for effective implementation. Let's talk about these standards and how you can incorporate them into your Lean Six Sigma project plan. The five S's are a Japanese standard that is specific to cleanliness. Many Japanese theorists believe that if it's not possible to have a clean workspace, then it's not possible to implement Lean Six Sigma. The Japanese believe that a clean work environment represents the mind of the Lean Six Sigma professional. And though Lean Six Sigma does not attempt to judge the team or implementer, identifying the five S's shows that the professional is approaching the Lean Six Sigma process in the right way. The five S's in the Lean Six Sigma process are sort, or seiri, set in order, or seiton, shine, or seiso, standardize, or seiketsu, and sustain, or shitsuke. If you're going to sort, you have to remove all unneeded items from the workspace. Removing items creates a clean environment. The sort function can be used as a process to clean work areas or project areas. To straighten the work environment, you're going to organize the items in the area. The objective is to make the items easily accessible to all as needed. To shine, you'll sweep, sanitize, and scrub the area. This is another process used to make sure that the environment is clean and accessible to all parties. To standardize, you're going to maintain cleanliness and not allow previous standards to be accepted. If you're going to sustain, you'll implement these standards as an ongoing process. The sustain process requires complete buy-in throughout the organization. It's only through complete buy-in that sustenance can be achieved. The benefit of implementing the five S's are that a company is able to reduce safety issues, reduce risks, increase compliance standards presented by outside organizations, more easily identify and remove waste, improve production and quality, and more easily implement improvements. Implementing the five S's indicates that a company is going to adhere to compliance and that its workers are prepared to implement any changes that may occur with limited interruptions. When employees are struggling with Lean Six Sigma, they can implement the five S's and allow this process of cleaning to take root before implementing the complete Lean Six Sigma process.