An Un-Standard Approach to Standards
You can't hit a grand slam unless all the bases are covered

Standardized work is absolutely necessary in a lean manufacturing environment but only if everyone understands how to detect smuggling.

A Middle Eastern story from the writing of Idres Shah will illustrate my point:

Nasruddin used to take his donkey across a frontier every day, with the panniers loaded with straw. Since he admitted to being a smuggler when he trudged home every night, the frontier guards searched him again and again.They searched his person, sifted the straw, steeped it in water, even burned it from time to time. Meanwhile he was visibly more and more prosperous.

Then he retired and went to live in another country. Here one of the customs officers met him, years later.

“You can tell me now, Nasruddin,” he said. “Whatever was it that you were smuggling, when we could never catch you?”

“Donkeys,” said Nasruddin.

How does that apply to standards? Like the border guards, we managers can do everything right and end up missing the obvious.

Look at Henry Ford’s definition of a standard: “The union of all the best points of commodities with all the best points of production, to the end that the best commodity may be produced in sufficient quality and at the least cost to the consumer.”

The goal there is signaled in the repetition; best . . . best . . .best. Our goal – obviously – is not to enforce rules but to make the best product the best way we can. For that, we need the contributions of all our people. Yet if we enforce rigid eternal standards, we turn ourselves and our people into guards who won’t see the donkey no matter how many times they look at it.

Listen to Henry Ford again: “If you think standardization is the best that you know today, but which is to be improved tomorrow, — you get somewhere. But if you think of standards as confining, then progress stops.” Quality expert Masaaki Imai makes the same point in his newest book, Gemba Kaizen: “Successful management on a day-to-day level boils down to one precept: Maintain and improve standards.”

There are two key points to remember: (1) Standards are not rules and (2) Standards are not permanent.

Standards are not rules
The problem with rules is that they eliminate motivation and responsibility. Some professors take attendance and use it as a factor in the grade but I don’t. Instead, I hold the students accountable for the course content. That way, we are united in our goal – to understand.

If I insist on rules of attendance, we aren’t united. Their goal is to be checked off as physically present, not necessarily to listen or comprehend. My goal is not to educate them but to count them or catch them out in something. Neither of those goals is worthwhile and the donkey gets smuggled right under our noses.

As it turns out, I get 95 percent attendance anyway because when I leave to them to do a good job, they soon realize that coming to class is the most efficient way to learn.

Think of a standard as a guide. A rule says do it this way and be rewarded; do it any other way and be punished – so don’t bother thinking – just do it this way, okay? A guide says this is the best way to do it we have come up with so far – but pay attention, there may be a better way.

Standards are not permanent
Standards should be seen as temporarily the best – a home run record to beat rather than a law to obey without thinking. If we insist on standards as rules, we are telling our people to check their brains at the door.

If you find yourself tempted to turn standards into rules, it’s helpful to recall Edison’s comment when asked about the rules for his laboratory: “Rules? There are no rules here. We’re trying to accomplish something."

Dr. Arlie Hall is an adjunct professor for the Center for Robotics and Manufacturing at the University of Kentucky's College of Engineering.

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