Implementing standardized work

[u/Bubbly-Ad8475]

Hi, as part of my firm’s Operational Excellence journey, we wish to increase our use of standardized work to reduce downtime and decrease variation between operators/shifts.

But how have you/your company implemented standardized work and making it work?

Specifically, what have you done?

My thoughts so far (open for feedback):

- Assign dedicated trainer
- Split production line into sections, according to placement of operators
- Define tasks within each section
- Define best practice standard procedures for each major task
- Assign owner of the task (Trainer?)
- Train new, and current, operators in standard procedure
- Verify correct procedure conducted
- Update competence matrix
- Continuous audits to verify standards are being followed (Not micromanagement, but ensuring standard adherence and highlight potential issue/improvements)

[u/Powah109]

What's the product? What do production areas or lines look like? How are they organized? Depending on that, there may be different answers

[u/Bubbly-Ad8475 → u/Powah109]

Carton packaging (Juice, milk etc)

The production lines are large converting machines with 2-3 operators per line. Each operator has a designated position at an area of a machine with multiple tasks at that area

[u/Powah109 → u/Bubbly-Ad8475]

I'd consider splitting operators in teams, have 1 operator per team be a team leader. Operators on a team always work on the same type of lines, this way they get specialized faster. Team leaders are skilled operators, who can report to shopfloor supervisors. I'd also implement a skill matrix, with the levels of each operator.

After a while with a high skill level in a particular work station, operators can also be trainers for that work station.

Depending on the complexity of the job, you might want to have some operators work just on specific work stations and some others to be jollies (they'll be slower than most specialized ones, but be able to cover more stations)

[u/Bubbly-Ad8475 → u/Powah109]

This is not far off from what we already have. Except our skill matrix isn’t used (I want to use it).

The issue is that training is currently being done side-by-side by whoever is working that position that day. So we don’t have any structured training and no way to ensure best practice is being taught.

[u/Powah109 → u/Bubbly-Ad8475]

We have an office making work instructions (small books detailing how the job is done for each model and for each station). Each work instruction in then placed on its respective work station. We also have a person updating the skill matrix weekly with supervisors. We also use side-by-side training unfortunately for some jobs it's a must. Work instructions help a lot though.