What is a Standard? How to create them?
Sustain the Improvements through Standards.
Many people think Standards or Standard Operating Procedures (SOP) are difficult to create and follow.
What is a Standard?
A simple way to teach yourself and others to repeat a process again and again without variations / defects.
You can list your daily activities in a sheet of paper to avoid missing out. That is a Standard. You can label things in your workplace to reduce searching. That is a Standard. You can use colour code to identify good and bad products. That is a Standard. These standards help anyone working in the same area to perform without doubts / clarifications.
You can find the standards in our day-to-day life. The steps for preparing noodles is explained in the packet using images (visual - easy to understand). All electronic products come with a manual with the images of how to operate them and how to troubleshoot in case of an issue. These are standards.
Benefits of Standards:
Teaches the Best, Easiest and Safest way to do a job
Measure performance
Preserve the knowledge / Expertise
Help in Training others
Prevent the recurrences of the problems / defects
These standards are the major difference between Organised / Systematic units and unorganised factories.
Unorganised factories repeat the same mistakes again and again, whereas Organised units, create a standard immediately and stop the recurrence of the issues.
If you think your unit is very unorganised, look at whether standards exist or not? Most probably, they won’t.
Start creating standards and start improving. Let us know your thoughts.
Cheers,
Ananth
Image Courtesy: Sunfeast Yippee Noodles. Picked from the internet