NC Division of Public Health QI Teams Celebrate “5S Workplace Organization”
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- Last Updated on Thursday, 06 March 2014 16:57
The North Carolina Tobacco Prevention and Control Branch and the NC Public Health Preparedness and Response Branch were recognized for their application of “5S” to increase the efficiency and effectiveness of their program operations and services as part of the NC Division of Public Health 5S Workplace Organization Competition. The term “5S” refers to a Lean QI method for workplace organization where the S’s stand for: sort, set in order, shine, standardize, and sustain.
The Tobacco Prevention and Control Branch entered the competition to organize their office’s storage cabinets, supplies, and educational materials. This improvement project allowed their staff to discard outdated materials to free up valuable storage space, while creating an organized work space that will allow them to quickly locate items and most important efficiently serve their customers. One staff member commented “This project has inspired me to organize my own office!”
The Public Health Preparedness and Response (PHPR) Branch entered the competition to organize their branch’s shared drive and call center/library. Applying 5S to their server allowed the branch to reduce the number of folders on their server from 100 to 20; freeing up over 20GB of space. Having a more organized shared drive has improved efficiency across 35 of the PHPR staff statewide. As one staff member commented “I can definitely say that it has helped me. In the past week, I have had requests for information on exercises three times and I was able to find the info quickly on the shared drive and get it to the County Preparedness Coordinator. Being able to get information to a County Preparedness Coordinator in quick fashion is extremely important to me and I think goes along with the customer service philosophy that we have.”
Improvements to their call center/library allowed the staff to free up valuable space and organize their call center so that staff can quickly gather and activate the call center in the event of an emergency as well as locate resources and materials.
