standardization

“Clean your room” “I did” “It doesn’t look like it” Did they or did they not accomplish the task? It depends on who you ask because there are differences in the expected outcome. One person’s version of “clean” and another’s version are different. Ambiguity in outcome expectations, whether for a

This post originally appeared on The Lean Edge: The question asked is “Are work standards individual or collective?” Standardization is a very difficult topic for most people in lean. The difficulty starts with a past practice and perception that standards are something we give people to force them to do

Standard work takes many different forms once it is applied. In an assembly environment with 90 second cycle times, it may lay out step-by-step precise activities down to the second and whether you use your left hand or your right hand. When people see those examples, they think standard work

My latest column for Industry Week, Lessons from the Road, titled “Building Manager Standard Work” has been posted. Here is an excerpt:   …People resist building standards in knowledge work because of natural variation. Yet if you already have variation, why would you want to add more by having no

My 2nd installment of Lessons from the Road, my new column for Industry Week is now available. This month the topic is Sustaining Your 5S Efforts. One of my early columns for Assembly Magazine titled Planning 5S? First Know Why! 5 years later, it’s still one of the most popular