Standard Work According to Lean Six Sigma

Standardizing your workplace’s SOPs is a great way to ensure process conformity throughout the organization. “Standard work” is often used in the same context as lean and six sigma lingo, but what does that really mean in a practical sense?

What does standard work look like in a lean environment, and how do the two practices fit together for more efficiency in the workplace?

First, we’ll go over how standardized work is a function of lean as well as what constitutes standard work. Finally, we’ll lay out a roadmap for exactly how to start standardizing work processes, how to format them for easy reference, and how to ensure they stay functional for the future.

What’s Lean About Standardization?

Standardized work is what fuels lean improvement in manufacturing.

Lean production first began as a collection of knowledge principles published by William Edwards Deming, an electrical engineer and management consultant in the mid-20th C. He went into great detail regarding efficiency, and these tenets were practiced and condensed into the Toyota Production System in the 1980s and further into the lean production philosophy with which we are familiar today.

Kaizen (also known as continuous improvement) is the primary purpose of lean production. Kaizen isn’t just something that you can cross off a checklist – it’s a perpetual upkeep of good practices and habits that decrease waste and increase quality.

Standard work was one of the key principles Deming taught, and it also informed the high quality threshold that made the Toyota company globally famous for its automobiles.

As global industry moved through the era known as Industry 4.0, the definition of standard work changed and grew alongside technology.

Standard work is possible for more factories than just those who manufacture a single product line (known as Low-Mix-High-Volume, or LMHV). Factories that have variable production or long cycles for job orders can also benefit from standardization throughout the production process.

Standard work is more than just increased profitability or productivity – standardization means less waste produced, less variability and defects per product, and better, safer working conditions for laborers.

3 Main Elements of Standard Work

There are 3 basic elements that comprise standard work:

1. Takt time
2. Order sequence
3. Inventory

Takt time is the required production rate to keep up with customer demand. Calculating your takt time is critical to understanding your cycle time, which is the time it takes to produce one item from start to finish. Takt time is a basic element of standard work because it gives a benchmark for the speed of your production process.

Order sequence is the specific task-by-task process of completing a job. In standardized work, order sequence must be identical from product to product and workstation to workstation. For example, items must be assembled in a sequential order so that automated quality controls can check for nonconformities at designated points.

Inventory is fairly self-explanatory: it is the necessary labor and materials for your production. According to lean six sigma, this should be the necessary components and no more so that you can minimize waste. If you don’t have many physical materials to manage, remember that inventory also includes the resources needed throughout production, such as server space, labor, facilities, etc.

How To Start Standardizing

The very first thing you need to do to start your standardization process is to audit your existing workflows. Even if you don’t currently have any established SOPs printed out somewhere in a 3-ring binder, you at least have workers who have practiced certain habits that make up their working style.

Get a good sense of how every miniscule detail works (or doesn’t work) and write it down somewhere for reference. You can organize these blueprints with diagrams, charts, or frameworks like 5S to group repetitive actions into separate workstations.

The next step is crucial: ask for your workers’ input. Since your shop floor workers are going to the ones interacting daily with your standard work instructions, they need to make sense. After all, if there’s an easier way to perform a task by way of a shortcut, you want to adopt that shortcut into your standard work as much as possible so that workers don’t revert to it outside of your standardization.

If you have some workable SOPs already, this is also a good time to test your existing SOPs to uncover any bottlenecks in workflow that could compromise standard work orders.

Formatting Your Standard Work For Shop Floor Use

Your newly-standardized work practices are ready, but they are essentially useless if they aren’t accessible to your workers exactly at the moment they need to be referenced. This is why formatting and distributing is just as important as creating them in the first place.

Digitization & Automation

It’s important to keep all data and reports in one centralized place for easy and instant access. Plus, when corrections or adjustments are made to SOPs, they are applied to every version so there aren’t discrepancies in instruction from station to station.

Streamline your solutions with a centralized MES platform for ultimate control over standard work processes. Digital versions of SOPs, policies, and work instructions are the most informative, effective, and detailed method of standard work.

Quality tools like check sheets and control charts can be automated for in-process quality checks so that data collection can be continuous throughout production. Forms for standard work in assembly order compliance are also available in manufacturing software platforms.

Visual Signs & Work Instructions

Write your manufacturing work instructions in simple terms so that there is no ambiguity. Adding photos and videos to your guidebooks is exceptionally helpful for showing exactly how a task should be performed on the line.

Aside from your digital work instructions at every workstation, have kanban boards accessible throughout the factory so that information is readily accessible especially in case of emergency.

Sustaining Your Lean Standard

A key element of lean six sigma is continuous improvement, so once you’ve standardized processes, your work is still not done until you set up future process reviews and regularly revisit these guidelines.

Continuous Improvement With Just-in-Time Training

Continuous improvements should be prioritized in every sequential stage of production as well as in every level of production from shop floor worker to top-floor executive.

Human error is inevitable, but there are definitely ways of limiting its impact through standardization error protocols.

To stay on top of evolving technology, you have to nurture skills in your workforce. The best way to do this is to provide on-the-go training through your standard work instructions so that there’s no disconnect between learning and performing tasks.

What To Do When Problems Arise

Unplanned downtime is an inevitable occurrence in manufacturing, so it’s best practice to have standardized templates and checklists ready to use when problems do occur. Incident report metrics can be calculated using manufacturing software platforms, and long-term data can help identify trends in breakdowns so that you can plan predictive maintenance processes.

Root causes analysis processes and templates should be readily available for any general issues that don’t immediately have clear causes.