Standard Work: Documenting the Interaction between People and Their Environment

So far, we have covered five Lean tools: value stream mapping (described in Chapter 3); 5S and visual management (described in Chapter 4), which improves productivity by creating a clean and manageable workplace; single-minute exchange of dies (described in Chapter 5), which improves productivity by reducing setup time; flow, pull, and kanban (described in Chapter 6), which helps create flow of products and services based on customer demand; and mistake proofing (described in Chapter 7), which helps eliminate defects. Standard work is another Lean tool: it defines and documents the interaction between people and their environment.