So how might leader standard work apply in continuous process operations, and when might it come before the other elements in Lean management, or even before a focus on standardizing operators’ routine procedures?
Set aside maintenance-related concerns for this discussion. Maintenance issues in process industries—apart from the differences in environments in which maintenance is performed—are not that different from those in other industrial settings. These issues, such as access to assets, having the needed information, tools, parts, materials, and equipment, standardized work for maintenance procedures, and so on, are largely the same in process and discrete manufacturing.
In continuous process manufacturing, as in the high-volume discrete manu- facturing example earlier in this chapter, there are usually few people directly involved in process operations. In addition to the high level of automation, continuous process operations are often characterized by material and pro- cess sensitivity, high temperatures and pressures, toxicity of the process, or all of these factors. As in the earlier example, operators often have defined, or at least habitual, routes through the plant with specific tasks or procedures to perform at each stop. In many continuous process industries, adherence to the operating and process safety procedures, no matter how vaguely defined or documented, often can be of critical importance in preventing catastrophic failures, not to mention destroying equipment and putting lives at risk.
The intent of leader standard work is to guarantee the integrity of the standardized Lean production process. Paradoxically, I have seen leader standard work applied as a first step in a process industry Lean implemen- tation where operators’ procedures could hardly be called standardized. Instead, the procedures were vaguely or only generally defined, received little, if any, attention, and were often out of date or obsolete altogether.
In this case, the organization was committed to a vigorous Lean produc- tion implementation but was only getting started. (See Case Study 8.4 in Chapter 8 for a description of this situation.) Recent catastrophic breakdowns
begin with: “Why were we waiting for material?” No backtracking is needed to uncover the details of a problem that happened yesterday or on the previous shift. The data are right there, recorded and preserved on the OEE tracking chart.
in the plant made it clear that critical elements of the operation were out of control. It was in this context that leader standard work was developed to serve as an emergency stopgap measure and a diagnostic for which areas first needed Lean attention. Without the discipline of a committed Lean follow-up, leader standard work as a stopgap would almost certainly have faded into check-the-box ineffectiveness, but fortunately that was not the case.
When Leader Standard Work Can Come First
Where safety and operating procedures are not well defined, or have been left for operators to interpret on their own with little or no input from first-line managers, establishing leader standard work can make sense in advance of other aspects of Lean or Lean management. Here, the standard work elements called out critical parameters at each stop on an operator’s route. Where the leader’s observations met expectations, she could move on. Where the observation indicated a process, procedure, or setting out of compliance, the leader first took immediate action to correct the situation. She then followed up to clarify or update expectations, ensured each opera- tor demonstrated how to do what was required and its importance, and monitored adherence on her subsequent rounds on the floor.
In high-volume, equipment-intensive automated or process industries, close focus on process means close focus on equipment and close focus on adherence to well-defined operating procedures. In these cases, takt-based measures are actually further from the process, further from the sources of variation than a measure like overall equipment effectiveness (OEE), timely preventive maintenance completion, or scores on procedure compliance assessments and process safety management. Lean management is about close focus on process to highlight misses and drive improvement. This principle operates as clearly in process industries as in discrete production environments, administrative, transactional, and healthcare settings.
A process does not have to resemble an automotive assembly opera- tion or other industrial setting to benefit from a Lean transformation, and to be sustained by implementing Lean management. Every Lean applica- tion is an invention, one you create based on a small set of Lean principles: understand value from the customer’s perspective, find the value stream that produces that value, focus on the processes in the value stream to identify and eliminate sources of waste from it, and strive to make the value stream responsive to your customer’s demands. Then, the key is to keep repeating these steps until non-value-adding steps are completely eliminated.
You can come to an understanding of what process focus means in your operation from these few Lean principles and your in-depth understanding of your operation. The key ingredients are knowing what makes your pro- cess tick and your judgment. Then, it is a matter of converting process focus into improvement no matter what the nature of your process. Nobody can do it for you, but fortunately you are in the best position to focus on process and use it to drive improvement in your operation.
So, gas up the Lean Management Express and take it for a spin. You will find the road in front of you gets smoother and takes you to places you could previously only dream about.