Leader Standard work – A bite a day keeps audit away!
I was reading “Audit Vs. leader Standard Work” by Mark Rosenthal and I suddenly realized what potential we have created at our work place.
Over the course of the year we have grown very fond of the audits. Especially for 5S and we are developing audits for maintaining other lean management systems put in place. So far they worked fine and actually helped us to stay on track and also creating in culture of continuous improvement. So you may be wondering why that is bad?
As Mark explains Audits are snapshot and often people will try to fool the system to be good for the audit but bad on other days when there is no audit. Now I wondered why it was not realized at our place?
The reason for this was simple , we had unknowingly incorporated that in our Gemba Walks. This ensured continuous followup of all the set systems on daily basis. This was an important move, addressing to issues as we walk through the workstation was part of our Leader Standard Work (LSW). This kept the systems in check on day to day basis, for example an operator was informed about parts without any designated place immediately when it was seen rather then waiting to conduct the audit.
This has inspired me to think of new system where in we will no longer need audits as we will do bit of checking everyday by enabling it through LSW of responsible people.
Some things which helps to achieve this goal :
1. Try to break down big monthly tasks into smaller weekly tasks , similarly weekly to daily tasks.
2. Use knowledge gained from issues of shop floor modify LSW to fit systems put in place to avoid these issue in future
3. Even if you have to use audits initially , make them stricter , raise the bar up as people start getting better
4. be disciplined to resolve issues immediately rather than waiting for the next formal audit
I am hoping to learn more by looking at audits and leader Standard work from this Perspective and ultimately be able to stay away from audits by taking a bite a day using the Leader Standard work.
Right on!
The whole idea is to build the checks into the work itself, and get to the point where it is self-auditing – any problem is immediately flagged and triggers a response.
That, in turn, takes the leader standard work to another level. Instead of checking compliance with the standard, the leader is checking to ensure problems are being properly escalated. He is using compliance with the standard as an indicator.
If the leader discovers the standard is not being followed during his check, he is REALLY seeing that the problem has been worked around rather than being raised when it first occurred.
Thus, the “problem” the leader is checking for is a breakdown in the escalation and problem solving process. This is a subtle point, but it is the difference between checking for COMPLIANCE (which really doesn’t work very well) and checking for CONTINUOUS IMPROVEMENT, which is the entire point.
Thanks for reading my stuff!
Mark
Hi Mark,
, can relate it to many realities on the shop floor.
Thanks for the input, Oh yes I do read your blog
That is so true about the checking the for Continuous Improvement, without understanding it we could be building a culture of creatively hiding problems rather than solving it right then.
Hoping to read more your interesting posts and your insights.
Vivek
Wow! This is quite exciting to think of eventually doing away with time consuming audits by performing them in small bites on a daily baisis via gemba walks. I very much like this concept.
Robert