by Lee Fried, on 03 Jul 2006 09:57 am
The Journey
Power of Standard Work
On Friday I conducted a 30 day post-Kaizen review with a team in one of our Administrative areas. During the event we standardized the work of four different teams and formed one large work cell to eliminate the need for handoffs between teams. This meant that the staff working in these areas went from being specialists to generalist basically overnight. The team was very skeptical that a single person could know all that it took to do a piece of work without having to hand it off. In other words, they did not believe it was possible for a single person to have all the knowledge that was held collectively within four teams in the “old way.”
There skepticism was understandable, because they did not have standard work, thus they did not understand its value. Over the last 30 days the team has had some change management challenges, but it is working! Four team members are fully trained and the rest of the team is right behind them. Cycle times are dropping rapidly, and most team members were quick to voice their excitement about the new process. Standard work is a powerful tool.
on 03 Jul 2006 at 11:13 am 1.Jon Miller said …
Lee,
It’s wonderful that you’re sharing these experiences and insights on daily kaizen with all of us. Keep up the great work!
Jon
on 03 Jul 2006 at 12:51 pm 2.Lee Fried said …
Thank you Jon. We want to share our experiences so others can learn from them and help improve the lives of all patients.
on 10 Jul 2006 at 8:46 am 3.Graham said …
I’m curious - out of interest, how did you handle the changeover period? Have a member from each of the teams sit together as a group until they could operate individually?
on 12 Jul 2006 at 7:28 am 4.Lee said …
We actually spent a fair amount of during the workshop getting the six team members from these process areas familar and trained on the new standard work. On Monday, they became the trainers for the entire staff. Additionally, the two managers from the areas moved out of their offices and set up cubes in the Gemba and have been helping fill gaps and train. It was rough the first couple of days as we got over the learning curve, but the team is flying now.