The other day my colleagues and I took part in an exercise on standardised work. The concept is that on the up-hill path of continuous improvement standardisation of work practices acts as a chock to stop you from rolling backwards to the old ways of doing things.
You start the exercise by asking the group to draw a pig. The result may come out something like this.....
If there's someone in the group with some artistic talent you may even get this:
You then congratulate the group on their impressive sketching skills and move on to giving them a piece of paper with a grid of 9 boxes marked out. You then lead them through a set of instructions involving marking M's, W's, arcs in various degrees and circles, at set positions within certain boxes.
The end result should be something that looks like this:
(Minus those annoying numbers in circles....)
The funny thing is, if everybody has been following the same instructions carefully then the pictures should all look like this (albeit some pigs will have slightly longer legs, fatter tummies or curlier tails).
The purpose of this exercise is to show how having clear instructions (policies and procedures) enables a standardised drawing (output/service) to be produced. The amount of variation between different outputs is reduced. It looks like a pig - even though it's not necessarily a pretty or character-ful one! The customer knows what they are going to get from your artistry (service) - the quality delivered is the same regardless of who does the drawing (where demand is received in the organisation).
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