Running a lean factory successfully revolves around lean leadership, where leaders guide employees, address issues, and boost performance efficiently. They streamline processes, eliminate waste, and offer maximum value to customers. To shape such leadership roles, you need to properly understand and implement Leader Standard Work (LSW), a mindset and tool.
In a dynamic manufacturing landscape, what leaders do on a daily, weekly, or monthly basis to ensure an organization’s smooth operation and constant improvement matters significantly. That is where LSW steps in to lend structure, promote consistency, minimize variability, and drive operational excellence.
This article dives into executive standard work’s key components, implementation, challenges, and solutions.
What is Leader Standard Work?
LSW encompasses processes and practices that aid managers in performing in a structured way today and tomorrow, with consistent efficiency. This framework helps them carry out standardized tasks in ways that meet safety, quality, cost, and delivery (SQCD+) parameters. LSW fosters lean management, allowing leaders to collaborate, develop strategies, and prioritize tasks better while also growing personally.
In fact, Leader Standard Work leads to:
- Consistent leadership practices
- A stable and productive environment
- Open leader-employee communication
- Proactive problem solving
- Efficient bottleneck detection
- Streamlined onboarding of new leaders
- Development of management skills
- Continuous improvement
- Better alignment with company goals
6 Core Components of Leader Standard Work for the Shop Floor
Here’s a look at the chief aspects of executive standard work:
- Regular Gemba Walks
The leader takes proactive, supportive walks around the factory floor to observe operations and note obstacles, downtime, or deviations. They talk to frontline employees, assess the environment, prioritize and resolve issues, and make decisions backed by real-time data.
- Standard Meetings
Another integral part of daily management, these meetings are recurrent, structured, and revolve around – shift handover, improvement, daily production, etc. Leaders and employees discuss crucial topics, express ideas and concerns, and share information.
- Inspections and Audits
Leaders conduct routine checks to make sure standards are followed rigorously. This helps them spot and address deviations, enhance processes, and measure operational efficiency. Audits also ensure the same but are more formal and less frequent.
- Visual Management
Leaders leverage visual tools and cues to manage work practices and communication more effectively. It becomes easy to comprehend processes and performance with diagrams, charts, images, etc., while increasing transparency. Leaders review key indicators, spot trends, monitor work progress, and make data-driven decisions.
- Procedures and Training
This aspect eases quality control and safety-related tasks. Leaders impart the required know-how and skills to workers to ensure efficient and consistent operations. By offering training and outlining procedures, you can establish performance standards, drive productivity, and encourage continuous improvement.
- Personal Growth
The personal development of leaders or managers is an essential part of LSW. They spend time learning about industry trends, honing their skills, picking up new ones, and building a lean leadership mindset.
How to Implement Leader Standard Work in a Factory
While LSW is closely linked with lean manufacturing leadership, executing it requires you to:
- Consider Company Goals
Make sure the Leader Standard Work is in perfect alignment with organizational objectives. The tasks included (like Gemba walks) must contribute towards the goals directly. To reinforce long-term alignment, include feedback loops and regular reviews.
- Pay Attention to Leaders’ Tasks
For a LSW framework to work, leaders at different levels must concentrate on the specific responsibilities associated with their unique roles. Identify crucial processes, assess their current performance, and note inefficiencies. Also, ensure everyone knows what they are accountable for. For instance:
- Team leaders should mostly deal with daily management, shift handoffs, and problem resolution. Their key jobs include direct supervision, confirmation of processes, and coaching.
- Middle managers need to devote about 50% of their time on matching departmental objectives with company strategy and resource planning. Hence, following procedures, conducting meetings, and reporting are their priorities.
- C-level executives must focus on conducting strategic site visits, ensuring adherence to strategic standards, and zeroing in on organizational goals.
- Define SOPs and Work-Related Instructions
Develop clear, precise standard operating procedures and describe the steps and best practices for every task. Mention how to conduct structured actions as well as the tools, documents, and other resources that will aid team leaders. In case of routine tasks, add step-wise work instructions. Also include possible challenges, common scenarios, problem-solving tips, expected outcomes, time needed, and the frequency of the activity.
- Provide Leaders with Suitable Management Tools
To boost a leader’s lean management skills, equip them with the right tools. It clears the path for improved interaction, productivity, efficiency, and strategizing. Leaders can automate tasks, track the progress of projects, share feedback and updates, and analyze data in a timely, cost-effective, and structured way.
- Communicate and Train
Make sure your executive level leaders have clarity about the purpose and perks of LSW. They should understand the role standardization plays in shaping a company’s success. They shouldn’t have any doubt about what is expected of them.
- Define Critical Performance Indicators
This will help leaders quantify goals and gauge the extent to which standard processes are effective. They can also assess the team’s performance. If any key performance indicator exhibits deviation from the result expected, managers can detect areas of improvement and take corrective actions.
- Embrace Continuous Improvement
Lean Standard Work is not a one-and-done affair. Hence, make sure managers share what they think about the framework, offer insights, and even suggest improvements if necessary. Regularly assess the LSW framework’s effectiveness and tweak it as your business evolves.
Common Challenges and How to Overcome Them
Some common issues that tend to crop up during LSW implementation are:
- Resistance to Change
If managers seem unwilling to embrace the LSW framework, help them understand the current gaps in processes, communications, and performance. Explain how lean manufacturing leadership helps attain company goals more efficiently, easily, and on time. Talk about how standardization can save time, boost productivity, and lead to consistent quality.
- Unclear Communication
Unless all leaders at different levels are on the same page, implementing LSW effectively can be difficult. So, conduct meetings and explain the importance of LSW and expected outcomes. Encourage managers to speak up, express doubts and concerns, and promote easy collaboration with data-backed or visually-rich tools.
- Inadequate Training and Resources
Managers should have access to ample resources to carry out their Gemba walks, meetings, 5S audits, visual management, as well as develop personally. And employees must receive regular training from managers to absorb the lessons and skills for consistent, efficient, and safe operations.
- Check-the-Box Mindset
Implementing LSW is not about checking off tasks on a list. Managers must understand the ‘why’ behind every activity and how it will help the team and organization. They must observe, reflect, and think strategically to become better leaders.
Bring Leader Standard Work to Life with Digital Tools
Digital innovations can make it effortless to adopt and execute Leader Standard Work in manufacturing. They can centralize information on everything from processes and best practices to training and audit reports. Managers can plan activities smoothly, prepare checklists, and use customized dashboards to track performance and progress, as well as analyze the results effectively.
With fabriq, it is also easy to automate the collection of data, employ visual management tools for smarter work instructions, ease information sharing, and boost stakeholder engagement. Hence, structuring and standardizing leadership practices, creating a stable, minimal-waste, productive environment, improving efficiencies, and nurturing a culture that continuously drives company growth is no longer impossible.
Give your leaders the structure and visibility they need to succeed. Learn how fabriq supports Leader Standard Work so your teams can deliver more value, every day.
