“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)
