This is one of the best std. work training ideas I have heard. I told the managers about it that I am working with and they want to give it a try with their teams. Fun.

Thanks for sharing,

Lee

We had them consider standard work like a recipe. We are a small enough company that we can squeeze everyone into the lunch room. I had two teams that made a coffeecake from scratch. One team had work instructions and premeasured parts (similar to them pulling their parts the night before). The other team got to see the recipe for a few minutes, and then it was taken away. They told the person mixing the recipe verbally step-by-step. You can imagine the uproar as the other employees watched. (The other employees were to observe from the customer’s viewpoint. Which coffeecake would they pay money for?) We baked the coffeecakes and everyone was free to help themselves. The “standard work” coffeecake looked a lot different than the other.

It was a lot of fun, and it did help. It actually helped ease the tension that surrounded the whole issue, and we all had a good laugh together. It was worth the time it took to put together.

Thanks for your blog. I truly enjoy reading about your ideas and plans.

I ask people to consider their drive to work. Would they rather drive on a road with no markings, no signs, no rules, and hence no safety, or would they rather drive in an environment where most of us adhere to a few basic standards? We can drive wherever we want to in almost any kind of vehicle with anyone we want to at any time we want to - that’s the creative part - but we do so with the assurance that most drivers will be following a few agreed-to standards. Without those standards, we would feel much less secure to venture out into the world and would have much less freedom for it.

In “The Toyota Way Fieldbook,” Liker and Meier point out that, “….It is only when the process is stable that you can begin the creative progression of continous improvement.” And standardized work helps create that stability.

Kent

I agree with the idea that standard work creates freedom. There are things we know should happen with patients on very good authority (i.e. solid research). We should create expectations in ourselves and in our patients that these things should be done, and work with our patients to find the right way to do them (back to the people doing the work - the patients - know best).

The remainder of our energy can then be focused on the next great treasure of a problem.