Standard Work is one of the core tools for Lean. It is most appropriate for use in repetitive, shop floor work areas, but can be modified to be used effectively in less structured work flows as well as in the office. Standard work has three main components. A prescribed sequence of operations… …balanced to the takt time Defined standard work-in-process
There is a theory called collective intelligence that says groups of people are smarter than individuals. Let’s look at a simple example of how this works. Imagine I listed the names of several states up on a board, and asked a room full of people to rank order the states based on size. Individual rankings tend to be all over the map. Some people do OK, but others are way off. If I averaged out Read more…
Just a quick tip today. Part of being successful at Lean is in developing a bag of tricks that you can reach into when a given situation presents itself. So, what do you do when you see an operator spin a product around (or lean over it) to check something on the back side of it? This could happen when the operator is confirming that a part is installed, looking for a model or serial Read more…
Lean is successful in large part because of its focus on the customer. It puts a great deal of emphasis on the concept of value. Value Stream Maps and the practice of distinguishing value-added and non-value added activities both immediately come to mind. ‘Voice of the customer’ (VOC) also helps the company look at its products and services through the eyes of its customers. Many of these concepts, though, are much more powerful when you Read more…
The Lean community learns a lot from each other. Two forward thinkers that I follow pretty regularly are Mark Graban of LeanBlog.org and Ron Pereira of LSSAcademy.com. A little while ago, Mark posted an article on Lean certifications, and mentioned that he was biased against them. Ron has the opposite viewpoint. He mentioned that he had even gotten some job interviews because of his certification. What was really surprising, though, was the flood of comments Read more…
Inventory is the collective term for finished goods that you intend to sell, and the components that go into those goods. Inventory is a necessary evil of production. Without inventory, nothing could be built, and nothing could be sold. But too much inventory drives up costs. Inventory must be stored, managed, moved, and insured. Obsolete inventory must be disposed of. Large quantities of inventory require large warehouses, forklifts, and staff. Plus, there is, of course, Read more…
Cooperation is the act of tailoring your activities to work with someone else’s in order to achieve a specific result. Cooperative relationships are generally informal. They tend to be successful because there is overlap in what both parties want to achieve-the intersection of both of their goals. While all parties have their own agendas, there is enough commonality to make the relationship beneficial for everyone. This is especially true in continuous improvement. A project may Read more…
How much do you think it would cost to take pictures at the edge of space? You might guess tens or hundreds of thousands of dollars. But you’d be wrong. With some basic problem solving skills and a little dash of creativity, your price tag would come out to $148. At least it would if you were a couple of MIT students. They were able to come up with a creative solution to launch a Read more…
The 80/20 rule states that 80 percent of the effects of something come from 20 percent of the causes. The 80/20 rule is also known as the Pareto Principle after the Italian economist, Vilfredo Pareto, who first mathematically analyzed the distribution of wealth in Italy. The 80/20 rule helps prioritize improvement efforts. Working on the critical few causes, the 20%, can yield big gains.
Standardized Work Sheets are another name for Standard Work Sheets, the more common of the names, as well as the entry under which we post our free form. They are one of the basic forms used for documenting Standard Work in Lean.
Standardized Work Sheets show header information, defining the process, and they show the layout of the area on graph paper.