Tag: Standardized Work

During this "let's try to get people vaccinated" phase of the Covid-19 pandemic, almost every article that I've seen about the vaccine and its...

I've been thinking a lot about hospitals and how they're preparing for the expected tsunami of Covid-19 patients who will need ICU beds and...

I've been to the Kennedy Space Center three times, I think... in 1980, 1985, and now in 2020 as an adult. Here's a photo of...

In Episode 10 of Lean Whiskey, Mark Graban and Jamie Flinchbaugh do their best to work through technology issues, as the Grinch clearly didn't...

Last month, I had an opportunity to visit the Toyota North American Headquarters that's now near me in Plano, Texas. Thanks to the MIT...

There are variations out there of graphics that are meant to illustrate how Standardized Work and Kaizen fit together. Kaizen is often articulated or...

"The way we've always done it" doesn't mean that's the right way or the best way to do something. One of my daily habits is...

This past Saturday was, of course, the 50th anniversary of the first moon landing. It still puzzles me why mankind hasn't been back on...

I had a great time and learned so much as a guest of Honsha and their Executive Development Mission trip to Japan in October....

Here's a blog post written by three physicians: Can the auto industry improve spinal fusion surgery? It's interesting that they so closely associate Lean with the auto industry when, at this point, Lean is used in virtually every industry and setting. That's why I used the word "Lean" in the title of my blog post here. They are also authors of a journal article titled "Application of Lean Principles to Neurosurgical Procedures: The Case of Lumbar Spinal Fusion Surgery, a Literature Review and Pilot Series," published in Operative Neurosurgery. In my post, I comment on their work...

Back in 2014, I wrote an article for The Lean Post: "Standardization is a Countermeasure, Never the Goal" I'm a big fan of Taiichi Ohno's advice to "start from need." I cringe when I hear people say that we should standardize the way work is done "because Lean says so." There's no substitute for judgment in the grey areas related to standardized work. What should we standardize? For what purpose? How standardized should the work be? Baseball is struggling with questions like this... how standardized should the balls be... and for what purpose?

Last week, I got back from my third trip to Japan and we visited three hospitals, Toyota, another manufacturer, and heard from a cafeteria services company leader about their Lean and continuous improvement journeys. As I've blogged about before, some of these organizations have been practicing TQM for 30 years and are adding elements of Lean methods on top of that foundation. I'm hardly an expert on Japan. I still feel like I view the country with fresh eyes. Standards and Standardized Work... at Work During this trip, I heard a number of people talk about the cultural imperative about following rules and laws. In the workplace, we might call these rules "standardized work"...