My First Lecture

PhD Research Poster

Popularity of my research topic

This is a kind of meta-analysis for my research topic called "5S" that often refers to as "housekeeping" or "workplace organisation" in the West. Actually, 5S is more than a tool and therefore those definition are narrowly defined.

Please do not believe what is written about 5S in Wikipedia. It is based on partial understanding and the article is still developing. We need to wait and see how it evolves. In my view, 5S is a principle for better management. I am discussing the reason in my thesis. My first journal article is in press and part of my argument is included in it. You will see why 5S is not just a tool.

Anyway, this small study was only part of my literature review. By using the Emerald Insight database, I searched for the number of 5S-related articles have already been written. It was only 163 articles! Most of them mentioned just the word "5S", nothing else (I need to dig down it). The typical description was "... quality (or lean) tools such as kanban, ...(other terms) and 5S". That is it. No reference was given due to no description of 5S.

The leading scholar is Sam Ho as he provides more than 10 articles on 5S. However, some of them are just description of five words which comprises 5S and mainly the replication of Osada's (1991) work. Other articles were written based on Hirano's (1995) workbook or adoption of Ho's description. The Productivity Press Development Team (1996) published a summary version of Hirano's (1995) workbook that most of those academic articles used as reference.

It is obvious that 5S has not really been studied. I might have to take an exploratory approach. My initial look tells there are less than 50 articles on 5S in total and those are mostly conceptual papers. Why I have chosen this topic that looks not really attractive? Yes, it is attractive as the graph shows an increased occurance of 5S-related articles. The number os quality and lean literature (5S-related articles) increases, the more interest in 5S would grow.

When decomposing all 5S-related articles, 77% of those look like I can incorporate in my literature review in some degree. My next task is to investigate what is written in these 127 articles. I already done my literature review and wrote a chapter, but this small study would help to build my review chapter in a more systematic manner.

*Full references are not provided for some reasons.