Standardized work

Standardized work is a methodology in which procedures for manufacturing are documented so they capture best practices. The documentation must be easy to change (25 essential Lean tools, n.d.). According to Aernoudts (2015) standardization can lead to the following things:

• It provides a predictable outcome regarding improved safety, quality, delivery and costs. • It creates a rhythm for work which results in the prevention of overburdening.

• It helps people to structure their work.

Aernoudts also suggests six steps for the implementation of standardized work: 1. Define the work capacity and bottlenecks.

2. Identify the elements of work and the variability in time required to complete the work. For this step, we should use a Process Study Chart (Figure 9). This chart is used to record the time needed to finish a work element in a process (Narusawa & Shook, 2009).

3. Determine what element needs improvement.

4. Determine for this to be improved element what its purpose is, why it is necessary, where, when and how it should be done, and who should do it. Decide whether it is possible to eliminate, combine, rearrange or simplify the element. This step results in an optimized sequence of elements.

5. Test the optimized sequence. Measure the results to see if it has been improved.

6. Make the new method a standard and teach people how to apply this standard. Also, make job instructions for the standard. Try to continuously improve the standard.

Figure 9. Process Study Chart (Narusawa & Shook, 2009)

In this method the procedures for manufacturing are documented. As the employees of Universal Corrugated have experienced that many things are not standardized or documented, the

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quality, faster delivery and reduced costs. Table 7 describes how to apply the different steps of the implementation of standardized work into the sales-engineering process.

Table 7.

Application standardized work into Universal Corrugated B.V.

Steps How to apply?

1. Define the work capacity and bottlenecks The employees of both the sales and

engineering process must calculate the work capacity of each employee: how many tasks is an employee able to do during a day? By counting the amount of tasks for 5 days

straight, they can calculate the average of tasks per day. Of course, one task is bigger than the other, so we need to make a difference between different sorts of tasks. A task that takes at most 1,5 hour is a small task. A task that takes between 1,5 and 3 hours is a medium task and a task that takes at least 3 hours is a big task. To calculate the total amount of tasks per day, the small tasks need to be multiplied by 0,5, the medium tasks by 1 and the big tasks by 2. The amount of tasks per day can then be calculated by the following formula: 0,5 * [amount of small tasks] + 1 * [amount of medium tasks] + 2 * [amount of big tasks]. The employees also need to identify whether there are any bottlenecks during the tasks, which causes the tasks to take longer than necessary. These bottlenecks can be for example a non-optimized software system or colleagues that take too long to hand over required information.

2. Identify the elements of work and the variability in time required to complete the work

Using a Process Study Chart the employees can record the time needed to finish a task. In the

column “process steps” they have to write

down aspects such as “creating an offer” or “making a lay-out”. These are the tasks. The work elements are things such as “writing down customer specifications” and “determining measurements”. They have to do at least 5 time measurements of the work elements, so that they have a good insight into what the variability in time is. They also need to write down this variability per work element. They can calculate the variability per work element by means of the following formula: Variability =

∑ (𝑋_𝑖−𝑚)2 𝑖

𝑁

(Xi = the separate time i of the work element, m = the average of all Xi’s =

∑ 𝑋𝑖 𝑖

𝑁 , N = the number

29 3. Determine what elements needs

improvement

By checking the variabilities of the work elements, the employees can determine what elements need improvement. These are the elements with the highest variability. 4. Determine for these to be improved

elements what its purpose is, why it is

necessary, where, when and how it should be done and who should do it

When the employees determined what

elements need improvement, the next step is to write down in detail all aspects of the element. These are things such as the purpose of the element and how it is done. Then, they need to find out whether it is possible to eliminate, combine, rearrange or simplify the element. Also, the managers of the different

departments must determine a working standard for each element and document this. By means of a working standard, the employees can perform the task quicker than before. When it is possible to eliminate, combine or rearrange the work elements, the employees can make a new sequence of work elements to do during their tasks.

5. Test the optimized sequence After the employees established a renewed sequence, they must make a new Process Study Chart to see whether the time to finish the task has been reduced. When it is not improved, the employees need to start over from step 2. 6. Make the new method a standard and teach

people how to apply standard

When the sequence is a working sequence with visible reduced times, they can make the new sequence the standard. However, to implement this, all employees must know about the standard and how to apply the standard. The managers must write down job instructions for the tasks so that all is clear for all employees.

5.2 5S

As mentioned in Chapter 2, 5S is a method that aims on the quality of the organization (Kogawa & Salgado, 2017). The five S’s of this method represent the following things:

• Sort/Seiri: eliminate what is not needed, keep what is needed.

• Straighten/Seiton: position things so that they can be easily reached when needed. • Shine/Seiso: keep things clean and tidy.

• Standardize/Seiketsu: maintain cleanliness and order.

• Sustain/Shitsuke: develop commitment and pride in keeping the standards.

Also, according to Randhawa and Ahuja (2017) the 5S method can result in achieving better productivity, a safe environment and less time wastage.

There are different authors who propose strategies for the implementation of 5S into an organization. These strategies all look alike, so for the sake of this research we describe only one strategy. The one Robertson (2003) provided is the most detailed one. This strategy contains of a 16- step plan:

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1. Determine whether 5S implementation is necessary in an organization based on for example an excess in inventory, absence of equipment when needed, and a reduction of neatness and cleanliness.

2. Build up a positive learning environment for the 5S implementation by means of visual representations and discussions.

3. Identify the organizational goals and objectives.

4. Make sure the top to bottom management is committed and each employee is supported. 5. Build up a checklist to evaluate the results of the 5S project which should be exercised

monthly.

6. Make a time policy management in which the time period for the 5S project is decided. 7. Identify problems such as loss of interest by the management and tackle these as early as

possible in the project.

8. Communicate what benefits other companies derived from a 5S project. This leads to more support from the upper management and employees.

9. Take pictures/videos of the work areas of the organization before the project starts. 10. Give responsibility to the 5S teams for training, evaluation and enforcement.

11. Start with the sort phase: identify what materials and items lying in the organization are unwanted and eliminate these.

12. Start with the straighten phase: place the needed and useful items at their respective spots so they are easily stored. Labelling and color coding the items might also be useful. 13. Start with the shine phase: identify the areas that need frequently cleaning and rank these

areas according to the frequency of use. Assemble the cleaning tools and eliminate dirt and dust at each corner and edge of the workspace.

14. Start with the standardize phase: make sure the first 3 S’s are integrated into the daily duties

of the employees. It must become a standard process in the organization.

15. Start with the sustain phase: organize a standard work space and develop a mindset of continuous improvement. Try to maintain all previous 4 S’s.

16. Evaluate the 5S project in order to measure the improvements and achievements and make a report of this evaluation.

5S is a proper Lean tool for Universal Corrugated and could eliminate the defectives in the sales- engineering process. Defectives are the things that lack quality such as the low-quality documents and drawings received. These are a waste for the company. By implementing 5S also time wastage could be reduced by almost 50% and productivity within the process could be increased (Randhawa et al., 2017). Furthermore, 5S is the most valuable Lean tool for an SME, due to its low financial investment (Rose, Deros, Rahman & Nordin, 2011).

5S is a tool mostly used in a manufacturing environment. However, it can also be applied in an office environment. The sales and engineering processes are office environments, so we need to find an appropriate way to implement 5S in these processes. The offices are considered as small paper factories, where documents are produced. 5S can reduce mistakes and it can reduce the time for searching the right information or documents. This increases productivity.

Universal Corrugated B.V. can implement 5S by following the 16 steps suggested by Robertson (2003). We will go through every step to see how these can be applied to the sales- engineering process of the company. Some steps can be combined or moved to another place. The sequence in Table 8 is the sequence we suggest for Universal Corrugated.

Table 8.

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Steps How to apply?

1. Determine whether 5S implementation is necessary in an organization.

The sales and engineering employees must determine what goes wrong by answering the following

questions:

- Is it hard to find digital or physical documents? - Did we label the documents, so that we know what they are before opening the document?

- Do we have useless items in our working spaces? If they answer yes to these questions, it is useful to implement 5S.

Having a messy workspace with a lot of unnecessary

items in it, can cause the quality of the employee’s job

to decrease. They waste time finding the needed equipment and thus, they spend less time working productively. This eventually leads to the employees working faster, as they have less time to complete the job. This decreases the quality of the delivered documents and information.

The quality of the layouts made by the engineering department is lower than expected, which is a burden for the sales department. There is also a time wastage between these processes. This means that a 5S implementation is definitely needed in order to improve this quality.

2. Identify the organizational goals and objectives.

Section 1.5 describes the objectives of the company. Besides these objectives, we determined that the quality and the efficiency of the work done is too low, which can be improved by 5S.

3. Build up a positive learning

environment for the 5S implementation by means of visual representations and discussions.

The employees of the engineering and sales

department should get an explanation about what 5S is and why it should be implemented in the

organization. The plant manager can do this by means of a presentation. He also has to make clear what the benefits for the employees are after the

implementation. He has to give the employees the possibility to provide their opinions about the

implementation. It is important that the management explains the implementation in simple language. When using the Lean terms, the employees might be scared off and not as motivated as it might seem too hard for them.

4. Communicate what benefits other companies derived from a 5S project.

The management must find out how other companies (preferably SMEs) experienced the 5S

implementation. They can look for this on the

Internet. It might also be useful to get in contact with a company that implemented Lean to find out what their strategy was and how it turned out. The management must communicate this information with the employees during the presentation.

32 5. Make sure the top to bottom

management is committed and each employee is supported.

The benefits of the implementation for the sales and engineering employees must be clear to everyone. This results in higher commitment. Announce the benefits during the presentation and it may also be useful to write them down and hand it out to all employees.

6. Build up a checklist to evaluate the results of the 5S project which should be exercised monthly and make a time policy management.

The management needs to write down what results need to be achieved by the 5S implementation and what the managers and the employees need to do in order to achieve these. This includes doing the first 4

S’s. The two main achievements are quality improvement and time reduction, but the

management might also come up with other “smaller”

achievements. They need to place the achievements on a timeline and set straight deadlines for it. Some achievement will not take as long as other

achievements. During a monthly meeting, the managers need to check this checklist and make a plan for achieving the non-checked points. When deadlines are not achieved, the managers need to find out what the reason was for this and how it can be achieved at a new deadline.

7. Identify problems such as loss of interest by the management and tackle these as early as possible in the project.

Check whether every employee is still as committed as before. When this is not the case, have a

conversation with them and repeat the benefits for this employee to stimulate his/her commitment. Commitment is an important aspect. Without commitment, the company cannot properly implement 5S.

8. Give responsibility to the 5S teams for training, evaluation and enforcement.

For this 5S implementation there are two teams: the sales team and the engineering team. These teams need training and evaluation. Training can be done using online courses, but also training at some specialized companies can be useful. The training needs to teach the employees about how to

implement the 5 S’s properly into their offices, so that they can achieve a more efficient working space. Evaluation can be done using the checklists (step 5). The plant manager is responsible for the enforcement of the employees so commitment is kept.

9. Start with the sort phase The employees of the two teams must check their workspaces to identify what materials and items do not add any value. Examples of these materials or items are old documents that are still on the desk, trash, and office supplies that are not needed daily. In this phase, the employees must take pictures of the workspaces before the 5S implementation and especially of the non-value adding items. This is a very simple step, but the pictures need to be very clear and every corner of the offices need to be on them. This way, the employees can compare before and after pictures.

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10. Start with the straighten phase After finding out what items do not add value, the employees need to throw them away or store them. When storing, the employees must place the items in such way that they are easy to pick. Also, storage boxes and maps are useful to keep the workspace neat. The employees need to store essential items closer to them and items they use very seldom further away. This latter can for example be stored in boxes. For the digital document they need to create maps in which they collect all items with the same subject. The maps must be named in such a way that every

employee knows what is in the map without opening it.

11. Start with the shine phase Clean the workspace. This means remove dust, clean the desks and the computers and vacuum the floor. When everyone cleans his own working space, this job is quickly done.

12. Start with the standardize phase Now that the workspace is neat and cleaned, this should be made the standard. The employees should

integrate “tidying up” and “cleaning” into their weekly

planning. It might also be useful to determine some rules and policies, such as that the employees need to store everything when they do not use it anymore. 13. Start with the sustain phase Maintain the previous 4 S’s. The plant manager must

keep an eye on this, so that the work areas are kept neat and cleaned all the time. In order to keep the spaces neat and clean, the employees need to take pictures of their workspaces after the shine phase. They can hang these pictures on a whiteboard, so that every employee can see how the workspace needs to look like. This way, everything will be placed at the correct spot so that everyone can find it and nothing will be lost.

14. Evaluate the 5S project in order to measure the improvements and

achievements and make a report of this evaluation.

At the end of the implementation the checklist should be checked: is every goal achieved? If not, what can be done better next time? Write this down in a report.