ABSTRACT
When the team returned from the break, Daniel wanted to address the question everybody had in mind, “What should be the content of the training?” First of all, he felt like he needed to give a quick reminder before discussing training.* “The T-shirt packing we have been using from the beginning to illustrate Standardized Work training is an operation cycle that has four major tasks to be done by a single person: (1) picking the T-shirt, (2) ironing the T-shirt, (3) folding the T-shirt, and (4) storing the T-shirt. As you remember, I initially asked you to split into four groups positioned according to the layout depicted on the flipchart over there (Figure 4.1).† I then asked every group to perform 40 cycles of each operation and compute their mode, which we also called standard time. You guys came up with times in this table (Figure 4.2). As part of the improvement process, we tried to identify reasons for the differences in times between teams in an effort to find best practices. We quickly agreed that the difference between groups for picking a T-shirt and storing a T-shirt, which by the way are very simple tasks, were mainly due to distance discrepancies. I mean distance from raw material bin to workstation, and distance from workstation to finished goods bin, respectively (Figure 4.2). We also agreed that variation in the third task was mainly the result of different folding methods. As you may note, ironing, a machine operation, is quite stable. The conclusion of this brief analysis is that the task with the biggest potential for training is folding. Now, let us step back a little bit to have a better view of the big picture. Remember when we listed all operations performed by each operator and obtained this tree (Figure 4.3).‡ ‘Ancillary tasks’ as well as ‘Core tasks’ must be considered
for training. However, what I have said previously for improvement also applies to training: the priority must be given to cyclic tasks. The reason is the economies of scale principle. So we will focus on the T-shirt folding task as it holds the most promise for delivering training gains. Now, do not get me wrong, as we will see later, saving on an operation task will not always translate into saving on the operation as a whole.”
