5S Tool Carts

The 5S Tool Cart Project was assigned to me at my first co-op working at Axcelis. On the workshop floor, there was a concern with the builders using their own toolbags/toolboxes. Work areas would be messy and it would be too easy for tools to get lost or stolen. The solution was to build tool carts that would be labeled and would make it easy to see what tools were missing.

I decided to start this project by looking through many work instructions and compiling a list of the most commonly needed tools. I also made sure to ask the builders what they wanted to see on the cart, and added the most common requests.

Taking this list of tools, I decided to design a 3-tier tool cart system, with each level corresponding to the different levels of necessity for the tools, the most commonly used ones were on the top, with the more rarely used ones on the bottom.

I designed the layout of the tools in Creo, and sent these CAD designs to a laser printer. The designs were printed on foam, and cut to fit the tool carts exactly. 13 different tool carts were created, and tools had to be ordered for each cart. I created a bill of materials for the carts so that if any tools are lost in the future, it would be easy for workers to reorder them. After assembling the tool carts, I also labeled each spot on the tool cart with a label maker so that it was clear what tool should be there if it were missing.

The tool cart implementation was extremely effective, as the number of lost tools dramatically decreased, and time spent searching for tools was much more optimized.