All About Work Standards is a practical and utilitarian guide to creating, implementing, maintaining, and improving work standards, the key to continuous improvement. It includes examples from a broad range of industries, and explains the difference between work standards and Toyota Standard Work. The book also explores Leader Standard Work, including its purpose, potential, and limitations. This hands-on resource is essential for practitioners, students, and researchers in lean manufacturing.
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Roser, Christoph. All About Work Standards: Creating, Implementing, Maintaining, and Improving Work Standards, Toyota Standard Work, and Leader Standard Work for Continuous Improvement. 235 pages: AllAboutLean.com Publishing 2024.
- Available on Amazon as a Hardcover (Case Laminate) ISBN 978-3-96382-088-5
- Available on Amazon as a Paperback ISBN 978-3-96382-089-2
- Available on Amazon as an EBook ISBN 978-3-96382-090-8
Praise for All About Work Standards
Standards are, in my opinion, the most important foundation of Lean and one which is often underrated and given less attention by manufacturing professionals. This is one of the main reasons why implementations of lean manufacturing often fail to deliver their full potential or at all. The discipline of setting and maintaining work standards and standard work is absolutely essential to lean manufacturing. Professor Roser has produced another masterpiece on lean which takes the reader through the different steps of writing, implementing, and improving standards, and with the added bonus of details on related topics such as OEE, TPS problem solving, and line balancing. It is full of practical examples and invaluable advice for the reader, and a must-have for all lean manufacturing practitioners. A superb addition to lean literature.
Cheong Tsang
Bosch Plant Manager (Retired)
Prof. Dr. Roser is an irreplaceable professional in teaching and studying production management systems. He has long experience and much knowledge as a practitioner and a consultant in lean management all over the world. Today he is the most active figure outside Japan in research on the Toyota Production System. Readers will definitely obtain a lot of valuable insights and new ideas from his book on work standards which are often referred to Toyota.
Dr. Masaru Nakano
Professor, Keio University; Former Toyota Manager
Christoph Roser has assembled a veritable encyclopedia in All About Work Standards, featuring standard work and work standard examples from a wide range of industries worldwide.
Mark Warren
Manufacturing Engineer and Production Historian
Christoph has done the operations world a huge service by writing a comprehensive book on a topic of fundamental importance but one that has been inadequately discussed until now. Despite being a foundation stone in the Toyota house, manufacturing standards have long been a source of confusion even amongst lean practitioners. With his customary clarity, Christoph sets out history, types, guidelines, implementation, and pitfalls. How standards relate to OEE and problem solving are the cherry on the top. Superb!
Dr. John Bicheno
Emeritus Professor of Lean Enterprise, University of Buckingham
Coordination of work is the key ingredient for any business success. The better the coordination, the less process wastes. For decades it has been known that there are three ways to realize coordination: standardization, planning, and mutual adjustment. It is also well known that standardization is the most effective and efficient. Still, most literature focuses on better planning and control instead of trying to standardize first. Christoph Roser redresses the balance, which provides a major input for any operating manager.
Matthias Thürer
Professor for Factory Planning and Intralogistics, University of Technology Chemnitz
Table of Contents
- Preface—The Miracle on the Hudson
- Chapter 1 Introduction to Standards
- Chapter 2 How to Use Work Standards
- Chapter 3 Toyota Practical Problem Solving (PPS)
- Chapter 4 Work Standard Creation Example
- Chapter 5 Examples of Work Standards
- Chapter 6 Toyota Standard Work
- Chapter 7 Toyota Standard Work Example
- Chapter 8 Leader Standard Work
- Chapter 9 Standards FAQ
- Chapter 10 Summary
- Appendix A Overall Equipment Effectiveness (OEE)
- Appendix B Brief Introduction to Line Balancing
- Bibliography
- Image Credits
- About the Author
Errata
Despite taking great care you will always find mistakes AFTER publishing. In my view, a high quality publication owns up to this and informs its readers about such mistakes. Here are the ones I have found so far, let me know if you find more :).
- Pg 2 Preface: The figure reference in “Figure 17 shows illustratively such a Remove before Flight tag.” should of course be “Figure 1 shows illustratively such a Remove before Flight tag.“
- Pg 79 Chapter 3: I forgot to add the quote at the beginning of the chapter. Here it is: “You have to start by establishing a plausible standard and then improve it by gradually drawing out new ideas. Taiichi Ohno (1912-1990) Father of the Toyota Production System“
- Pg 85 Chapter 3.3: “There are so many other factors that influence cost that it would be hard to evaluate the true impact of the improvement.” should be ” There are so many other factors that influence quality that it would be hard to evaluate the true impact of the improvement.“
- Pg 136 Chapter 6.2: “Figure 79 shows a simplified example of a U-cell with one, three, four, and eight operators.” should be “Figure 79 shows a simplified example of a U-cell with one, three, five, and eight operators.“
- Pg 172 Chapter 7.8: “Having more than four workers does not change the output due to the constraint rivet bracket 1, , but the system becomes …” should be “Having more than four workers does not change the output due to the constraint rivet bracket 2, , but the system becomes …“
- Pg 174 Chapter 7.9 ” … the previous cycle time of 30 seconds has increased to 34 seconds due to the additional waiting time. ” should be ” … the previous cycle time of 30 seconds has increased to 34 seconds due to the additional walking time. “