Tag Standardized Work

Standardized Work: The Foundation for Learning and Improvement

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.

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"FEMA Does Not Reward Innovation"

AP News | The Columbia Daily Tribune How’s this for government bureaucracy? People got creative in trying to save money to restock the New Orleans aquarium by chartering a boat to go catch fish instead of buying them. The catch?…

Delegation is Not "Buck Passing"

The article isn’t online, you’ll have to join the club lucky enough (ahem) to fly American Airlines to read the gem of an article from American Way magazine titled “Pass the Buck to Make a Buck.” The main point is…

We Must Follow Standardized Work, Right?

The Informed Patient – WSJ.com Here’s an article ($$) about hospitals working to prevent bedsores or “pressure ulcers” as they are called. I didn’t get around to blogging about this more fully, but it was in the news recently that…