VALUE
IMPROVEMENT
LEADERS
TOPIC #19
604 words + 2 activities  | 13 minutes (3 to read, 10 minutes for video)
STANDARD WORK
PRINCIPLE
Providing always-available, non-disruptive reminders of the proper way to complete a process in the workflow ensures reliable performance. 

TOOLS
Standard work

APPLICATION
Think about how you might incorporate standard work in your process.
Do Intelligent, Well-Trained People Need Constant Reminders?

No. But a reminder constantly at the ready isn’t such a bad idea. In fact it’s a great idea pioneered in Japan and exported to leading organizations around the world.
You Redesigned a Process. Great. Now How Will You Get People To Do It?

Most people agree that standard processes are a good idea. So a team gets through the phase 4: Improvement Design, and produces a new, improved, standard process. In fact, they probably feel they are done with phase 4. And when asked the question in the headline, they may say, “We’ll train them.” Of course you’ll train them. We support training 100%. Then what? 

If a team’s entire sustainment plan is “training,” they are tacitly accepting future process failures because the signal that re-training is needed is typically errors, defects, or sub-standard outcomes. 

***CULTURAL REALITY CHECK***

It takes a mature environment to look at an error or defect and ask, “How did this process fail?” MUCH more likely, is an environment that to seeks a target for blame and re-training: “Who did this? Bring them to me for a proper chastising and corrective action discussion.” 

***NOW BACK TO THE PROGRAM***

To avoid failure, you could preemptively build periodic re-training into operation plan, which guarantees that you’ll be delivering training to people who don’t need it. So which will your team choose? 
  1. Train > Fail > Blame > Train > Fail > Blame
  2. Train > Train > Train > Train > Train > Train
It’s a false choice. There is another option. Provide trained personnel with reminders in the workflow which are always-available for easy, instant reference, and which are non-disruptive.
Standard Work for Consistent Outcomes

Standard work is a visual guide to accomplish a job quickly and accurately. When designed and deployed correctly, standard work improves the speed and quality (and often safety) of the work. It’s not a comprehensive work operating manual. It’s not training material. Standard work is limited to the elements critical to consistent results. 
(By the way, it’s tempting to apply the rules of English syntax and thus change the phrase to, “standardized work,” or “standard of work,“ but that would be an error. Just as North Dakota is not improved by calling it, “Northern Dakota,” or “North of Dakota.”)
Standard work shows the process abbreviated to key visual cues designed to prompt the memory of trained personnel. It should include:
  • sequence of steps
  • methods for avoiding common or costly errors
  • other critical process parameters
Standard work is designed by and for those performing the work because they understand those three bullets best. Then, the final product it is strategically placed in the flow of the work so it’s available for immediate reference by those performing the work.
But What About Processes Too Critical To Depend on Standard Work Alone?

Standard work is available for instant reference but this requires a process owner to recognize a need and then decide to reference it. Some process errors are so common or carry such a highly negative impact that we need mechanisms to interrupt the work flow to prevent them. For those we have forcing functions, the subject of the next article.
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