Laurels for IPM at the Taiki Akimoto 5S Awards Competition
View(s):The Institute of Personnel Management (IPM), Sri Lanka was recently awarded the 5S Merit Award for the year 2012, at the Taiki Akimoto 5S Awards Competition for successfully implementing the internationally accepted safety standards: ‘5S’. The Taiki Akimoto 5S Awards competition is an annual event organised by the Japan Sri Lanka Technical and Cultural Association (JASTECA).
5S is a workplace organizational system which adopts five [05] key strategies to adhere to and achieve maximum output from an organisation. It is based on the concepts of Kaizen Technique, and the five key strategies are popularly known by their Japanese terms: Seiri, Seiton, Seiso, Seiketsu, Shitsuke; which can be translated to English as: Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardize and Sustain.
The concept of 5S was initially embraced by the IPM in 2010. Since then the institute has continuously striven to improve certain aspects of 5S along with emphasis being paid on quality all round in its structure and output. Significantly, in October 2012 IPM also appointed a Quality Assurance Executive in October 2012 to ensure that the institute achieves its ‘total quality improvement targets’ through 5S implementation.
Since October 2012 IPM strove relentlessly towards achieving their ‘quality’ targets. IPM sought these goals through observation tours on 5S implementation at institutions that had won 5S accolades and sought further training at the JASTECA institute on 5S 
implementation for two staff members: Quality Assurance Executive, Ruwani Senevirathne; Assistant Manager Customer Relations, Himali Dasanayake – both of whom subsequently gained certification as highly acclaimed JASTECA 5S instructors.
Further, staff training programmes, 5S implementation manuals, determined endeavour on the part of the IPM staff, and successful implementation of the 5S system at the institute within a four-and-a-half month period enabled the IPM to compete for the aforementioned prestigious laurels and honoured with a Merit Award at the Taiki Akimoto 5S Awards Competition held recently.
The Quality Assurance Executive of the IPM states that through the implementation of the 5S system within the organization, the overall quality of the IPM has improved, benefitting both staff and students. She further states that 5S is now a way of life for the IPM and that it will lead the way for the institute to become a world-class HR professional institute.
Currently IPM Sri Lanka is the only professional HRM institute to be honoured with the TAIKI AKIMOTO 5S Merit Award.
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