The 5S Practice as A Condition for Employees' Creativity

The fourth industrial revolution leads to radical changes in production systems. Enterprises are looking for innovation to survive and effectively competition. The number of employees in the service-providing sector and creative industries will be increasing. In this way, creating new research space, especially in the area of the effect of working conditions on workers' psychical health and their creativity. We are already observing more and more research devoted to the individual-level psychological processes implicated in creativity highlights organizational work environment influences on those processes. The aim of this study is to identify the nature of the relationship between working conditions and the way and scope of implementation of 5S practices. This leads to identification of the objectives set for the implementation of 5S in the perspective of working conditions and an analysis of their potential and actual impact on the creativity of employees. The authors conducted bibliographic search, in-depth interviews with company managers and employees, analyzed the implementation of the 5S. Consequently, the practices used in manufacturing companies during implementation of 5S principles were identified. In the analyzed implementations the context of working conditions were not taken into account. The potential effects of the implementations on mental comfort and the creativity of employees also not included. The survey was conducted in several companies from the Lower Silesia region of Poland. In the cognitive layer the research allows for a better understanding of the phenomena accompanying the implementation of 5S practices and their effect on working conditions.