Standard Work--Countermeasures

“So, Curmudge, after our discussion of obstacles last week, what solutions… countermeasures…did you come up with?”

“Lean.”

“Lean? That’s all? Just Lean? No details?”

“Details are above my pay grade.”

“Curmudge, everything is above your pay grade. You don’t even have a pay grade.”

“True, Jaded Julie. But I still think that’s a great default answer for a volunteer. So back to the problem at hand. Ultimately the folks at Generic General Hospital will need to develop a Lean culture, which as we know, includes continuous improvement of their processes. To improve a process it must be standardized, and to be standardized it must be documented.”

“I’ve got it, Curmudge. A Lean culture is the countermeasure for non-standardized work and documentation problems. So how do they acquire the Lean culture?”

“Julie, people can learn a Lean culture—and any other culture for that matter—by doing it until it is hardwired.”

“Of course, just as we have been discussing for the past year.”

“So GenGen needs to hire a sensei; train their Lean Team, their leaders, and the people in gemba; and get going on kaizen events. Their efforts will be prioritized according to corporate goals and strategies as developed via hoshin kanri planning. As hoshins are completed, leaders will realize that further progress is being held back by the lack of standard work and documentation. Hopefully, management will elevate standard work and documentation to the top of the priority list and develop organizational frameworks to support them. This should mitigate the obstacles we discussed last week.”

“Mark Graban suggests that the Lean technical tools will allow us to turn Lean philosophy and concepts into action. Might the reverse also be true? Could the repeated use of Lean tools help instill Lean philosophy and concepts in the people?”

“It may be defying the law of gravity, Julie, but perhaps Lean can pull itself up by the bootstraps. If that’s possible for an inanimate object like a computer, it should be feasible for a living concept like Lean.”

Affinity’s Kaizen Curmudgeon