Standardization as an Enabler

The critical task when implementing standardization is to find that balance between providing employees with rigid procedures to follow and providing the freedom to innovate and be creative to meet challenging targets consistently for cost, quality, and delivery. The key to achieving this balance lies in the way people write standards as well as who contributes to them.

First, the standards have to be specific enough to be useful guides, yet general enough to allow for some flexibility. In repetitive manual work, standards are pretty specific. In engineering, since there are no fixed quantities, the standards need to be more variable. For example, knowing how the curvature of the hood of a car will relate to the air/wind resistance of that body part is more useful than knowing a specific parameter for the curve of the hood.

Second, the people doing the work have to improve the standards. There is simply not enough time in a workweek for industrial engineers to be everywhere writing and rewriting standards. Nobody likes following someone’s detailed rules and procedures when they are imposed on them. Imposed rules that are strictly policed become coercive and a source of friction and resistance between management and workers. However, people happily focused on doing a good job appreciate getting tips and best practices, particularly if they have some flexibility in adding their own ideas. In addition, it is very empowering to find that everyone is going to use your improvement as a new standard. Using standardization at Toyota is the foundation for continuous improvement, innovation, and employee growth.

Standardizing Work for a New Product Launch

The Toyota Way of handling the chaos of getting an army of people involved in creating and launching a new vehicle is to standardize the work in a balanced way that doesn’t give complete control to any group of employees. Having only engineers devise the standards would be a form of Taylorism. On the other hand, having all the workers come to consensus on every step would be overly organic, resulting in chaos. Toyota’s innovative approach is to develop a “pilot team.” When a new product is in the early planning stages, workers representing all the major areas of the factory are brought together full time to an office area where as a team they help plan the launch of the vehicle. They work hand in hand with engineering and develop the initial standardized work used when the product is first launched. Then it is turned over to the production teams to improve. As Gary Convis, President of Toyota’s Kentucky manufacturing operations, explained:

Pilot teams are put together, especially when we launch a new model, like we just launched the Camry. Team member voices are heard by way of that link.

Usually it’s a three-year assignment. We have a four-year model change cycle, so we’ll have an Avalon model change, then we’ll have a Camry model change, and we’ll have a Sienna model change. So there are enough big model changes to have these guys go through at least one or two before they rotate back out.

There is a great deal of learning for team members on the pilot team about the design and production of the new vehicle, and when they finish their rotation they are back on the floor as team members, contributing to and improving the standardized work. This is important, because launching a new vehicle is an exercise in coordinating thousands of parts, with thousands of people making detailed engineering decisions that must fit together at the right time.

When my associates and I studied Toyota’s product development system, we found that standardization promotes effective teamwork by teaching employees similar terminology, skills, and rules of play. From the time they are hired into the company, engineers are trained to learn the standards of product development. They all go through a similar training regimen of “learning by doing” (Sobek, Liker, and Ward, 1998). Toyota engineers also make extensive use of design standards that go back to when Toyota first started engineering cars. Within each section—door latches, seat-raising mechanisms, steering wheels—engineering checklists have evolved from what has been learned as good and bad design practice. The engineer uses these checklist books from his or her first days at Toyota and develops them further with each new vehicle program. More recently, Toyota has computerized these books.

U.S. companies have tried to imitate Toyota’s approach by going right to computers, creating large databases of engineering standards, but without success. The reason is they have not trained their engineers to have the discipline to use the standards and improve on them. Capturing knowledge is not difficult. The hard part is getting people to use the standards in a database and contribute to improving it. Toyota spends years working with its people to instill in them the importance of using and improving standards.

Standardization Is the Basis for Continuous Improvement and Quality

Toyota’s standards have a much broader role than making shop floor workers’ tasks repeatable and efficient. The Toyota Way results in standardized tasks throughout the company’s white-collar work processes, such as engineering. Everyone in the company is aware of and practices standardization. For example, an engineer can walk into any Toyota factory in the world and see almost identical processes. Toyota also applies standards to the design of products and manufacturing equipment.

Managers have a misconception that standardization is all about finding the scientifically one best way to do a task and freezing it. As Imai (1986) explained so well in Kaizen, his famous book on continuous improvement, it is impossible to improve any process until it is standardized. If the process is shifting from here to there, then any improvement will just be one more variation that is occasionally used and mostly ignored. One must standardize, and thus stabilize the process, before continuous improvements can be made. As an example, if you want to learn golf, the first thing an instructor will teach you is the basic golf swing. Then you need to practice, practice, and practice to stabilize your swing. Until you have the fundamental skills needed to swing the club consistently, there is no hope of improving your golf game.

Standardized work is also a key facilitator of building in quality. Talk with any well-trained group leader at Toyota and ask how he or she can ensure zero defects. The answer is always “Through standardized work.” Whenever a defect is discovered, the first question asked is “Was standardized work followed?” As part of the problem-solving process, the leader will watch the worker and go through the standardized work sheet step by step to look for deviations. If the worker is following the standardized work and the defects still occur, then the standards need to be modified.

In fact, at Toyota the standard work is posted outward, away from the operator. The operator is trained using the standardized work, but then must do the job and not look up at the standardized work sheet. The standard work sheet is posted outward for the team leaders and group leaders to audit to see if it is being followed by the operator.

Any good quality manager at any company knows that you cannot guarantee quality without standard procedures for ensuring consistency in the process. Many quality departments make a good living turning out volumes of such procedures. Unfortunately, the role of the quality department is often to assign blame for failing to “follow the procedures” when there is a quality problem. The Toyota Way is to enable those doing the work to design and build in quality by writing the standardized task procedures themselves. Any quality procedures have to be simple and practical enough to be used every day by the people doing the work.

A GOOD HOUSEKEEPING IN FIVE STEPS

INTRODUCTION OF THE 5 S
Kaizen values so much the process as the result. In order that the people become jumbled in the continuation of their effort they kaizen the management must glide, organize and execute with well-taken care of the project. Often, the managers wish to see the result too much and ignore a vital process. The 5S “are not a fashion” nor the “program” of the month, but a conduct of the daily life. Therefore, all project kaizen needs to include pursuit passages.
Since they have been kaizen for against the resistance of the people to the change, the first step consists of mentally preparing the 5 employees so that they accept S before beginning to the campaign. Like a preliminary aspect to the effort of the 5S, must assign a time to analyze the implicit philosophy of the 5 S and its benefits:

• Creating ambient of it worked clean, hygienic, pleasant and safe.
  
• Revitalizing to gemba and improving substantially the mood, the moral and the motivation of the employees.
  
• Eliminating the diverse classes of dumb diminishing, the necessity to physically look for tools, doing easier the work of the operators, reducing the exhausting work and releasing space.
  

The management also must include/understand the many the 5 benefits that S in gemba for the totality of the company; between these we mentioned:
Seiso, in particular, increases the trustworthiness of the machines, leaving of this one form more free time to the maintenance engineers to work in machines that are prone to sudden failures. Like result, the engineers can concentrate themselves in primary aspects that greater importance, like the preventive maintenance, the predictive maintenance and the creation of equipment frees of maintenance, in collaboration with the design departments.

A GOOD HOUSEKEEPING IN FIVE STEPS
The five passages of housekeeping, with their Japanese names, are the following:

1. Seiri: to differentiate between elements necessary and unnecessary in genba and to unload these last ones.
2. Seiton: to arrange in form ordinate all the elements after seiri.
3. Seiso: to maintain cleanings the machines and the atmospheres of work.
4. Seiketsu: to extend towards the one same concept of cleaning and to practice the three previous steps continuously.
5. Shitsuke: to construct self-discipline and to form the habit to commit itself in the 5S by means of the establishment of standards.
   

In the introduction of housekeeping, frequently the western companies prefer to use equivalents in English of the 5 S Japanese, like in a “Campaign of the 5 S” or one “Campaign of the 5 Cs”.

SEIRI (TO SEPARATE)
The first passage of housekeeping, seiri, includes the classification of the items of Genba in two categories - necessary and the unnecessary thing and to eliminate or to eradicate of Genba this last one. A top must settle down on the number of necessary items. In Genba all class of objects can be. A meticulous glance reveals that in the daily work it is only needed I number small of these; many other objects would never be used or only they will be needed in the future distant. Genba is full of defective machines without use, sieves, dies and tools, products, work in process, raw materials, provisions and parts, shelves, containers, writing-desks, banks of work, document archives, carts, shelves, platforms and other items. A practical and easy method consists of retiring any thing that is not going away to use in next the 30 days.

Frequently, seiri begins with a campaign of red labels. It selects an area of Genba like the place for seiri. The 5 members of designated S go Genba with handfuls of red labels they place and them on the elements that consider like unnecessary. At the most great they are the labels and greater it is its number, better. When it is not clear if a certain item is needed or not, a red label must be placed on this. At the end of the campaign, it is possible that the area is covered with hundreds of red labels, which takes to compare it with woods of maples in autumn.

SEITON (TO ORDER)
Once seiri has been carried out, all the unnecessary items have retired of Genba, only leaving necessary the number minimum. But these items that are needed, such as tools, can be elements that do not have use if they store too much far from the workstation or place where they cannot be. Take us stage to the following of the 5S, Seiton.
rmalidad and to undertake therefore the corresponding remedial action.

SEISO (TO CLEAN)
Seiso means to clean the work surroundings, including the machines and tools, just like floors, walls and other areas of the work place. Also there is an axiom that says: Seiso means to verify. An operator who cleans a machine can discover many defect of operation. When the machine is covered of oil, soot and dust, is difficult to identify any problem that can be forming. Nevertheless, while one cleans the loose machine we can detect with facility an oil flight, a crack that is forming in the cover, or nuts and screws. Once recognized these problems, because in being solved with facility.

One says that most of the failures in the machines begin with vibrations (due to loose nuts and screws), with the strange particle introduction as dust (as a result of cracks in the ceiling, for example), or with a lubrication or it lubricates inadequate. Therefore, seiso constitutes a great experience of learning for the operators, since they can make many discoveries useful while they clean the machines.

SEIKETSU (TO SYSTEMATIZE)
Seiketsu means to maintain the cleaning of the person by means of use of suitable clothes of work, lenses, gloves and shoes of security, as well as to maintain surroundings of healthful and clean work. Another interpretation of seiketsu is to continue working in seiri, seiton and seiso in continuous form and every day.

For example, it is easy to execute the process of seiri once and to realise some improvements, but without a effort to continue such activities, in a moment the situation will return to which was originally. It is easy to do only once kaizen in Genba. But to realise they kaizen continuously, day after day, is a completely different subject. The management must design systems and procedures that assure the continuity seiri, seiton and seiso. The commitment, endorsement and involvement of the management in the 5S become something essential. For example, the managers must determine whereupon frequency is due to carry out seiri, seiton and seiso, and what people must be involved. This must be part of the annual program of planning.

SHITSUKE (TO STANDARDIZE)
Shitsuke means self-discipline. The people who continuously practice seiri, seiton, seiso and seiketsu - people who have acquired the habit to do of these activities of their daily work acquire self-discipline.

14 Principles of Toyota Way

The 14 Principles of the Toyota Way is a management philosophy used by the Toyota corporation that includes the Toyota Production System. The main ideas are to base management decisions on a "philosophical sense of purpose", to think long term, to have a process for solving problems, to add value to the organization by developing its people, and to recognize that continuously solving root problems drives organizational learning.

14 Principles of Toyota Way.

• Principle 1: Base your management decisions on a long-term philosophy, even at the expense of short-term financial goals
• Principle 2: Create a continuous process flow to bring problems to the surface.
• Principle 3: Use "pull" systems to avoid overproduction.
• Principle 4: Level out the workload (heijunka). Work like the tortoise, not the hare.
• Principle 5: Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time
• Principle 6: Standardized tasks and processes are the foundation for continuous improvement and employee empowerment.
• Principle 7: Use visual control so no problems are hidden.
• Principle 8: Use only reliable, thoroughly tested technology that serves your people and processes.
• Principle 9: Grow leaders who thoroughly understand the work, live the philosophy, and teach it to others.
• Principle 10: Develop exceptional people and teams who follow your company's philosophy.
• Principle 11: Respect your extended network of partners and suppliers by challenging them and helping them improve.
• Principle 12: Go and see for yourself to thoroughly understand the situation (Genchi Genbutsu).
• Principle 13: Make decisions slowly by consensus, thoroughly considering all options; implement decisions rapidly (nemawashi).
• Principle 14: Become a learning organization through relentless reflection (hansei) and continuous improvement (kaizen).