I had an insight of the blindingly obvious yesterday.  Most people see standard work as a straight-jacket.

It isn’t.  Its the basis for improving processes.  it is difficult to improve a process if it is unstable.  That will certainly be the case if everyone does it a different way.  Creating a standard process and measuring the outputs is an invitation to everyone involved to observe what they do and find ways in which their process might be improved. Implementing changes in the process and measuring the resulting outputs enables everyone to answer the question “is this change an improvement?”  If it isn’t revert to the old standard.  If it is an improvement make the new process the standard.

Standard work stops people making a change because they think it will be an improvement.  Not all changes are improvements.  Standard work ensures you have a benchmark to check against.

Standard work for Last Planner

A second reason for Standard work is to reinforce the adoption of new thinking and new behaviours.  I’m currently working on the development of standard work for project managers, site managers and trade foremen involved in implementing Last Planner.

In Creating a lean culture (Productivity Press 2005) David Mann underlines the importance of Leader standard work as part of lean transformation - that’s leaders from first line supervisors through to the Boardroom.  The standard work I am developing is an example of that.

I’d love to hear from others who have done this.