Standardized work is often misunderstood as rigidity or control. In Lean thinking, it’s the opposite: a shared baseline that makes problems visible, supports learning, and enables continuous improvement. This archive explores standardized work as a living system—one that evolves through observation, experimentation, and respect for people.
Examples range from healthcare and service work to manufacturing and everyday systems, showing how clear standards reduce frustration, improve quality, and make meaningful improvement possible.
TL;DR: The Olympic gold-medal puck was almost lost not because of bad intent, but because the system relied on people remembering under chaotic conditions. The real lesson is timeless: leaders must design processes that account for human fallibility instead of…
Stepping away from serious issues, let’s talk about things that can really get heated — like washers and dryers (rim shot). Sorry for the bad joke… plus, I’m a drummer, so I love the chance to do a nice rim…
I will try to be careful with this topic, since I’m obviously not a doctor. Criticism of doctors gets thrown around pretty easily around many hospitals, too much so, I think. You sometimes hear blanket criticisms about doctors being difficult,…
TL;DR: Standardized work, influenced by Toyota and Dr. Atul Gawande, is crucial for improving safety, quality, and efficiency in healthcare. It should be created by those who do the work, be flexible, and serve as a basis for continuous improvement.…
Today’s post is a few Friday odds and ends about a new thing I’ve been involved, events I’m attending, and a new book I’m anxious to read (after I’m done reading a favorite old one).
When I was in Sweden recently, we had a lot of good discussion about the Lean concept of “standardized work.” There was a lot of agreement from different presenters at the Lean laboratories conference, and from the hospital people we…
I try to keep things light here on Saturdays… one of my favorite sites is failblog.org and their related blogs. Although they normally document problems and bad designs and mishaps that would constitute a “FAIL,” they often have something that…
I just finished Dr. Atul Gawande’s latest book, The Checklist Manifesto: How to Get Things Right. I believe that this book is the single most important book of the year for ANY Lean leader, not just people working in healthcare.…
Thanks to my friend Amber for telling me about Dr. Atul Gawande’s interview on NPR’s Morning Edition yesterday. Regular readers of the blog will know I’m a huge fan of Gawande’s previous books Complications: A Surgeon’s Notes on an Imperfect…
My blogging will be relatively light this week, given some holiday time off, family visiting, and a short trip for New Year’s. There’s nothing lazier, I guess, than linking to a reader comment, but I had a new comment from…
Today was an exciting day at the Institute for Healthcare Improvement‘s 21st annual National Forum on Healthcare Quality Improvement. It’s my first time here, to learn and network. They have over 5,000 attendees who are committed to quality and patient…
TL;DR: Hospitals that actively engage frontline staff through Lean suggestion systems are saving millions while improving patient care, morale, and safety–without layoffs. Staff-driven kaizen works because the people closest to the work are best positioned to improve it, every day.…