Standardized Work: Avoiding the Complexity Trap

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“No matter how great the principles behind a manual are, it has no value if it cannot be applied in practice.” – Taiichi Ohno*

One of the most critical but challenging elements of an organization’s lean transformation effort is the adoption of standardized work.  Often underestimated by those just learning lean, the benefits of standardized work include among others, reducing process and product variability, providing a starting point for investigating problems, helping people identify when a problem is about to occur, and enabling improvements to be sustained. 

Within the oil and gas industry, it is common to face resistance from people recounting images of one of the major players known for creating large, overly complicated instructions that strangle innovation and, in reality, cannot be fully followed - and oil and gas is unfortunately not the only industry where this happens.  There are companies in virtually every industry that complicate documentation to the point of ineffectiveness and crushing the creativity of team workers.  Documents in these companies tend to be long, complex, and rarely change, and as a result, create a false sense of security that the standards are helping achieve consistent, predictable, and inherently safe performance throughout the operation.

How Much is Too Much?

So what is the difference between a lean thinking approach to standard work and one where the documentation is ineffective and stifling?  Both approach standardization with the objective of reducing variation in the way work is done.  Both use standards to assure the most important aspects of the process are followed and work is done safely and with a high level of quality.

To prevent heading down the wrong path when rolling out standardized work, it is important to understand the key differences between the two approaches and what it is that makes one more effective than the other.

Guided by Scientific Method

Although there are numerous differences between a lean and traditional approach to standardization, the most glaring is that work in lean thinking organizations is guided by scientific method or a PDSA (plan-do-study-act) mindset, while traditional organizations are not.  Although a seemingly simple difference, the effect on standardization, as well as other aspects of the business, can be dramatic.

In both types of organizations, standardized work is the best current practice known at the time it was developed and is expected to be followed as written.  Organizations guided by PDSA thinking, however, consciously accept the notion that following the practice to consistently producing safe, efficient, and high quality work is a hypothesis - and people are always looking for the hypothesis to fail.  Whenever a defect, delay, or incident occurs, it is understood that the hypothesis has failed and that a quick adjustment - or improvement - is necessary to prevent a similar failure from occurring in the future.  The resulting change to the process becomes a new hypothesis that it will operate as expected and, when it fails, will drive further action.

Traditional organizations do not approach standards in this manner because it is not normal behavior for people to be looking for something they created to fail.  A significant amount of time would be spent creating the perfect document that includes enough detail to accurately describe the prescribed process.  When the instruction is released, the work would be considered "done" and the person would move on to his or her next project.  The document would only be revised when a big problem occurs that identifies a glaring weakness needing attention.  And since people are not specifically looking for the practice to fail, the small issues would be ignored.  As a result, continual improvement of the process does not occur and variability between operators in the way work is actually done grows.

A Shift in Thinking

Keeping instructions short, visual, and easy-to-follow requires more than just telling people to do so.  It requires a far more significant shift in thinking than many people realize or are ready to accept.  When standardized work is approached standardized work as part of a continual experiment toward creating the perfect process, it will become seen as far more than just a way to convey information.  It will become seen as the anchor to learning and effective problem-solving, and a critical element to the company’s overall success.

Copyright © 2014 Gregg Stocker

* From The Toyota Mindset: The Ten Commandments of Taiichi Ohno by Yoshihito Wakamatsu (Enna Products Limited, Bellingham, WA, 2009)

Making Learning a Habit

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“The ability to learn faster than your competitors may be only sustainable competitive advantage.” – Arie de Geus 

Ever since the The Fifth Discipline: The Art & Practice of the Learning Organization was published back in 1990, business leaders have talked about the need to transform their companies into learning organizations.  And although the concept of organizational learning and its connection to competitive success is logical, there seems to be significant differences in what people think the term learning organization means.  As a result, in the 25 years since Peter Senge wrote the book, it seems that very few companies have successfully implemented the concept and truly become learning organizations. 

Learning and Performance 

The first point to clarify about organizational learning is that knowledge means nothing if it doesn’t eventually result in improving performance in some way.  The value of knowledge is in the ability to use it to improve quality, cost, safety, revenues, or some other aspect important to the organization’s success.  It should be noted that the value of knowledge could also be indirect - e.g., by coaching others to improve performance. 

Secondly, it's important to understand that there is a difference between individual and organizational learning.  Although there is obviously a relationship between the two, competitive success will occur on a much more consistent basis when people improve their ability to learn as a team. If we think of success as resulting from a continual cycle of learning and applying, the faster an organization is able to move around the cycle, the more success it is likely to achieve. 

Making Learning a Habit 

Creating a learning organization requires establishing the culture, methods, and systems that support learning and make it become a part of the work people do every day.  Leaders can talk about the importance of learning, but without a method that institutionalizes it in some way, it will never become a part of the organization's DNA.  Besides enabling is to occur on a consistent basis, effectively standardizing an approach can make learning an expectation of everyone in the organization. 

This is where many people fail to understand the significance of the PLAN-DO-STUDY-ACT (PDSA) cycle.  Often thought of as only a tool to address problems, the PDSA cycle is a method to drive individual and organizational learning. 

Based on scientific method, the PDSA cycle drives learning through a conscious understanding that every action is  based on a hypothesis that a specific outcome will occur and, when the outcome does not occur as expected, the hypothesis needs adjustment.  It is in the failure and subsequent adjustment of the hypothesis where learning occurs. 

As an example, the current design of a process is a hypothesis that it will enable work to be consistently produced in the right quantity and at the right quality and cost when needed.  Whenever this doesn't occur - e.g., defect, delay, cost overrun, etc. - the hypothesis is proven wrong and something about the process needs to improve.  Team learning occurs through the understanding of the root cause(s) of the problem, and in experimenting with countermeasures to address them.   

Learning driven by the PDSA cycle can be applied across the organization from the leadership team to the shop floor.  Selecting where and how to set up a new factory, deciding whether or not to enter new markets, or choosing where to focus capital investment in the coming year are all hypotheses that can drive learning.  The key is to consciously understand that the hypothesis, to study outcomes closely to know whether or not results met expectations, and to discover how to close the gap between the two. 

The Classroom is Where the Work Occurs 

For years we've been taught that learning takes place in a classroom where experts convey knowledge to students.  When looking at the value of classroom learning in terms of improving performance and competitiveness, though, it becomes evident that the connection is weak, at best.  And although there are some benefits to conferences, seminars, and in-house training classes, they are not the type of activities that drive team learning. 

Establishing PDSA-thinking throughout the organization is a significant change for most companies, but the results in terms of advancing team learning and improving performance make it well worth the effort. 

Fast and Flexible

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As we climb out of the worst economic downturn since the Great Depression, it's looking like success will come to those companies that are more flexible and can adapt to change more quickly than competitors.  Although this has always been a competitive advantage for companies, it is quickly becoming a necessity for survival in the years ahead.

The problem this poses for many organizations is related to the fact that, as a company grows it tends to become slower and more resistant to change.  With growth comes more people, more formalized policies and systems, and additional layers of management that all contribute to a slowdown in decision-making and interfere with the ability to do much of anything quickly.

Begin by Recognizing the Need

The problem for many companies is that they don't realize how slow they've become or that the lack of speed is affecting the ability to compete.  Listed below are a number of activities where moving quicker can greatly improve competitiveness.  When looking at these activities from strictly a financial perspective, it becomes clear that they actually cost the company when not addressed.  Once an investment is made in a particular process - whether related to new product development, manufacturing, etc. - the company loses money everyday that the investment does not produce income.

• New product development
• Shipping products to customers
• Building construction
• Servicing customers
• Integrating an acquisition
• Expansion into new markets
• Implementing a new ERP system

It is important to keep in mind that success in business requires more than speed.  Quality of product or service must be continually improved along with improving cycle times. There are very few markets where customers will accept substandard quality even when the product or service is delivered quickly.

How?

In order to become more flexible and adaptive, companies must study their processes, systems, and cultures continually to identify where the delays and breakdowns occur.

On the process side of the equation, reducing cycle time requires mapping the value stream and identifying where the delays, breakdowns, and quality problems occur.  This assumes, of course, that there is, in fact, a standard process.  It is not uncommon for companies to have a variety of ways to perform similar tasks.  Sometimes referred to as the "it depends" rule, improving the process first requires defining a standard approach for how the work is to be done - and making sure everyone follows the standard - before attempting to make improvements.

Working on the process issues to reduce cycle time tends to be the easy part of improvement.  The culture must also be addressed to determine how open people are to changing processes, how effective communication is within the company, and basically why people do the things they do.

Removing the barriers that interfere with a company's ability to react quickly to changing market conditions will create a more flexible and adaptive - and profitable - company.  The key is to keep speed and flexibility in the forefront of people's minds until it makes its way into the company's operating philosophy.

Success in this endeavor can put you in an elite group of companies that manage to remain fast and flexible regardless of how large they become.

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