Following on from Value Stream Mapping workshops, this very often identifies the need to improve the way we capture what we do in a “standard” or repeatable way.

Standard work is one of the foundation workshops to the Lean Temple for any organistaion; without this or 5S then it will be difficult to proceed along the lean journey.

Once we understand how to capture the best method for carrying out a task or activiity and have undertood the cycle time to perform this task, we then need to confirm that we are not overburdening the opertaor (classed as ”muri” in TPS). If several proceses are linked together we also need to establish if this workload is well balanced.

Standard work will capture all activities which form a repeatable process. Think of it as a “Haynes Manual” for your process with detailed pictures and step by step capture of the best method for carrying out a task or activity.