1st Edition

New Horizons in Standardized Work Techniques for Manufacturing and Business Process Improvement

By Timothy D. Martin, Jeffrey T. Bell Copyright 2011
    179 Pages 79 B/W Illustrations
    by Productivity Press

    179 Pages
    by Productivity Press

    Enabling management to verify that processes are being performed correctly and in an efficient manner, standardized work provides limitless opportunities for process improvements. So much so, that it has become a vital component of improvement efforts in Lean enterprise systems.

    New Horizons in Standardized Work: Techniques for Manufacturing and Business Process Improvement is an all-inclusive guide to applying standardized work principles to virtually any business in any industry. It facilitates a fundamental understanding of standardized work principles and the logic behind their development, so readers can successfully extend and adapt them to their own work situation. It also:

    • Supplies an accessible introduction to standardized work, from a cyclic perspective
    • Explains how to instill and maintain quality in work processes right from the get go
    • Provides the foundational basis required to apply standardized work concepts to a wide range of work situations
    • Includes several appendices with helpful tips and problem-solving tools

    In a step-by-step format, this book discusses the relationship of the work period and the takt time, as well as the importance of the three main worker interface levels in job design. It includes an array of examples that demonstrate how the concepts discussed can be applied across a range of industries—including health care, construction, business processes, and food services.

    What is Standardized Work?
    A Foundation for Stability
    The Best Method at the Moment
    A Basis for Improvement
    How do we get Standardized Work?
    The Required Components for Standardized Work
    Types of Standardized Work

    Observation
    Making Observations and Formulating New Questions
    How to Break Down Work Element Observations for Standardized Work
    Establishing Work Element Standards & Graphical Notations
    Methods for Work Element Data
    Evaluation of the Data
    The Importance of Observing the True Situation
    Learning to See Below the Surface

    Cyclic Standardized Work
    Work-Component Types
    The Effects of Variation
    How to Document Standardized Work: The Standardized Work Chart
    Tools for Standardized Work: The Work-Combination Table
    The Importance of Geographic Relationship
    Making the Problems Visible

    Long-Cycle Standardized Work
    Applying Standardized Work Principles to Long-Cycle Applications
    The Concept of Parallel Work Steps
    Other Cyclic Standardized Work Issues
    The Concept of Takt
    Looking for Other Ways to Express the Concept of Takt

    Job Design for the Worker : Understanding the Levels of Interfacing
    Decoupling-When is Protection from Interruption Needed?
    Protection Expressed by Units of Time
    Effects of Coupled Jobs
    Using the Interface Levels for Design of Good Standardized Work
    Striking a Balance: Man and Machine
    Some New Rules and Some New Tools

    Noncyclic Standardized Work
    Parallel Work Steps or Tasks on Demand
    Workers on Patrol
    Merging Takt Time and the Work Period
    Assisting the Worker: Standardized Work Drives Equipment Needs
    Assisting the Worker: Tools for Complex or Infrequent Tasks
    Applying Standardized Work to Transactional Processes
    In Summary

    Biography

    Timothy D. Martin, Jeffrey T. Bell

    By going through the process of creating standardized work that Tim and Jeff have outlined in this book, you can go from having process knowledge that is only held by two or three people, to being able to post the correct standard work for doing the work every day. ... There can be no doubt that standardized work is a base for a solid Lean enterprise system. To continually improve your operating systems, there has to be a base to begin, and standardized work is that base.
    —Rick Harris, President, Harris Lean Systems

    Tim Martin and Jeff Bell have assembled all of the process and accompanying details of how to build standard work, so that anyone in any field can learn and apply them. While learning by doing is a must to develop the skills of developing excellent standard work, New Horizons in Standardized Work gives you the baseline (and an abundance of supporting details) to follow to successfully become skilled at standard work and continuous improvement.
    —Jim Huntzinger, President, Lean Frontiers