Standard Work – A Key Lean Tool

May 10, 2017 by Joe Aherne

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Our Director of Healthcare Services, Jane Bishop, introducted an exciting game which Leading Edge Group plays to demonstrate standard work, a key Lean tool.

This was completed by a group of Public Health teams from a Yellow Belt course.

By documenting the current best practice, standard work forms the baseline for continuous improvement. As the standard is improved, the new standard becomes the baseline for further improvements, and so on. Improving standard work is a never-ending process. Standard work is used to reduce variation in how people undertake work and therefore improves safety and quality of the work. We have outlined this below in three photos.

The first picture below illustrates the participants with all different drawings of pigs as they were gave little instruction in round one.

The following picture shows almost empty paper as they were given instructions that were too detailed and confusing in round two.

In the last picture below, given standard work instructions you can see how the participants produced pictures that were near identical and show very little variation.

If you want to find out how Leading Edge Group can help you or your organisation, get in touch today!

Standard Work – A Key Lean Tool

Joe Aherne

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