No Standards .. No Improvement

Many people associate the word standard with
something that is monotonous and frankly quite
dull.

Kaizen is in the business of firstly setting standards
and then continually striving to improve on those
standards.

Standards are not something that should be chiselled
into granite and rolled out and dusted down when the
auditors are in town. (that was almost a poem)

It was Taicchii Ohno, the kaizen guru of the Toyota Motor Company who stated:

"Where there is no standard there can be no kaizen"

In other words if we don't have a consistent approach to how we do things how can we ever hope to improve
them.

I want to share with you five compelling reasons why having standards is not only important, but essential
if we want to remain healthy and grow our businesses.

Compelling Reason Number One - Creating Standards Uncovers Waste

Where there are no standards you can be sure that waste is rife in your organisation.

One of the things we strive for using kaizen is finding the "best known way" of doing something.

By getting people together, and discussing and experimenting with the different way they do things, we
can draw on all of their experience and ingenuity to come up with a streamlined more efficient way of doing
the task that throws out the waste.

Compelling Reason Number Two - Everyone benefits

Sometimes individuals come up with great ideas and implement them in their own job.

These improvements are the best kept secret in town.

Meantime on the other side of the office one of their colleagues doing the exact same work is really
struggling.

By pooling best practices, the secrets are revealed and everyone benefits.

Compelling Reason Number Three - Preserve Expertise

If an employee who knows the best way to do a particular job leaves, without sharing
their expertise, that knowledge will be lost forever.

By keeping our standards "alive" and regularly reviewing the way we do things we constantly embed
peoples expertise so that knowledge will never be lost.

Compelling Reason Number Four - Quality

If we are striving to improve the quality of a particular process, by eliminating errors, how can we possibly
do this if everyone is doing things completely differently ?

It's almost impossible to see cause and effect in these circumstances.

When everyone is using the "best known way" on a particular task, and we make an improvement, then
it is easy to see how effective the change has been.

Compelling Reason Number Five - Training to Give Confidence

Standards should be at the heart of training both new and existing people within the organisation.

When we come up with great improvements for the "best known way" the standards should be updated
and then people trained in the new method.

Often Organisations document the new standard and then on a Monday morning give everyone a copy and
expect them to read it and then use the new method.

Guess what ! It doesn't happen, and the improvements are not realised.

Experience tells me that the only effective way of implementing changes to standards is by
physically sitting beside individuals ,getting their input and walking them though the changes several
times till they "get it".

This gives them the confidence they need to go with the change.

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