Standardized tasks are the foundation for continuous process improvement and employee empowerment.
There’s a quote in here that I love, actually written by Henry Ford in 1926.
“Today’s standardization… is the necessary foundation on which tomorrow’s improvement will be based. If you think of “standardization” as the best you know today, but which is to be improved tomorrow – you get somewhere. But if you think of standards as confining, then progress stops.
Enough said.
4 responses to “The Toyota Way: Principle 6”
The music industry has often danced to a different tune. And with the start of the new school year, college students return to class with threatening legal documents awaiting them, care of the RIAA. If that’s the song the music labels …The Toyota Way: Principle 6Standardized tasks are the foundation for continuous process improvement and employee empowerment. There?sa quote in here that I love, actually written by Henry Ford in 1926. ?Today?s standardization? is the necessary foundation on
– Use “pull” systems to avoid overproduction. The Toyota Way: Principle 4 – Level out the workload. The Toyota Way: Principle 5 – Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time.The Toyota Way: Principle 6- Standardized tasks are the foundation for continuous process improvement and employee empowerment. The Toyota Way: Principle 7 – Use visual control so no problems are unhidden. If you are not regularly staying in touch with your customers someone
– Use “pull” systems to avoid overproduction. The Toyota Way: Principle 4 – Level out the workload. The Toyota Way: Principle 5 – Build a culture of stopping to fix problems, to get quality right the first time.The Toyota Way: Principle 6- Standardized tasks are the foundation for continuous process improvement and employee empowerment. The Toyota Way: Principle 7 – Use visual control so no problems are unhidden.
I love this quote too. But more when applied to system interoperability.
When talking about tasks, I guess it all depends on the type of tasks. For process-oriented tasks such as car manufacturing, it indeed makes sense.
Now for knowledge- or collaboration-oriented tasks, I don’t see how that applies.
And since we are now in a knowledge economy, standardization of tasks is becoming less and less relevant.
From the (in?)famous “Why we hate HR”:
To continue on the “knowledge economy” path: a knowledge economy is driven by talent and talent does not come in a standardized way, nor does it perform standardized tasks.
Last but not least, this standardization of tasks starts to get decried by top business writers. In his last book “The future of management”, Gary Hamel talks about some of the issues related to standardization.