Companies that are serious about the Lean Business Culture standardize everything they can. The most important things to standardize are are the procedures we use to create value for our customers– Process Standards. Here are seven benefits that result:
- Standards Make Your People Be Safe and Successful A standard is the best we know about something. “Best” takes into account both safety for workers and the methods that will get the job done correctly and productively. If we all follow the “Best way we currently know” we are most likely to get the job done right, safely, and on time.
- Standards Make Training Easier Clarifying the exact process steps to get the job done right provides the steps we can train to a person who is new to the job.
- Standards Provide Consistent Results Consistency of quality and production time makes it easier to schedule work, meet customer delivery dates, and produce a healthy profit without over-stressing workers.
- Standards Engage the Power of Habit God created human beings with the ability to form habits by repeating the same actions (or thinking) over and over. When we act out of habit, it takes less mental and physical effort to get the same results. The key is to get our habits to match the “best way we currently know the get the job done.” This frees up workers to focus attention on important things like quality and ideas for improvement.
- Standards are a Baseline for Improvement “Continuous Improvement involving EVERYONE” is the distinctive feature of the Lean Business Culture. Without a standard, there is nothing to improve from. The current standard provides the starting point to which a possible “better way” is compared. Is the new way faster? Does it enhance quality? Is it safer? If so, it becomes the new standard and we’ve successfully improved.
- Standards Help Us Spot Problems A key element of Lean is bringing problems to the surface. If we routinely follow a standard process, we’ll get the work done in a consistent amount of time—the standard time. We can hit standard times as long as nothing goes wrong. When we miss standard times, we can assume that something went wrong…a PROBLEM. Regular production tracking enables us to see when we miss the time and to ask the question, “Why did we miss our time?” We get these problems on a list so we can decide which problems to work on.
- Standards Capture, Sustain, and Spread Learning As we solve problems and make improvements to our value-creating process, we update our standards and train the appropriate people to the updates. This is a key way to preserve and pass on what we have learned. When workers are confident that their ideas and problem-solutions will make a difference, they are more likely to participate in continuous improvement.