Standard Work is a Verb is a developed discussion of LEAN from the Standard Work perspective. Much has been written about LEAN Manufacturing but very little includes more than a passing acknowledgement of “standardized work”. Even less discussion of how to use Standard Work exists.

In this book, John Allwood establishes the prominence of Standard Work, linking it historically from Taiichi Ohno’s own hand to its initial introduction to Western manufacturing and into the waiting hands of Bob Pentland. Bob Pentland later became John Allwood’s teacher at Tuthill Pump in Alsip Illinois. Pentland’s comments and anecdotes are included throughout the text.

John introduces the tools and skills required to perform Time Observations and write Standard Work for the shop floor and then he connects those tools to A PHYSICAL Continuous Improvement Cycle and explains how the CI cycle can be used as a visual control to manage processes. John then explains how these tools and skills line up into a functional “playbook” with which to approach any new and unknown LEAN situations.

John engages in a lot of discussion about the need to create the right environment to let the LEAN tools work in and to create the right culture to support and sustain LEAN improvements. He points out the WANT that must be present to drive transformation and the “what it takes” to fund the project with energy and people.

This book provides a bridge of understanding, complete with real world examples, that will take you from the principle and philosophical notions of “standardized work” clean through to the “fear of change” blasting, physical activities of Ohno’s Standard Work. You will be compelled to get out to your own process floor and try these tools on for size after reading this book.

John Allwood was introduced to the Toyota production system while working at Tuthill Pump, Alsip Illinois in the 1990’s. That is where he met Bob Pentland, who is featured in Chapter 8 of Womak’s “LEAN Thinking” book. In 1998 Bob was brought in as the company’s LEAN consultant, and shortly thereafter, Tuthill Corporation began a ten-year transformation to The Tuthill Business System; this under the watchful eye of Mr. Pentland.

 

John was appointed Tuthill Pump’s Change Agent early in the journey, and served as such for the next eight years. He then transitioned into serving as Product Line Manager over and entire value stream including 5 machining cells and an assembly cell. After that, John took his LEAN show on the road, serving in engineering and management positions and found that LEAN was not very well understood from the Standard Work perspective, apart from the company where he had spent the previous decade.

John also encountered and received training in several “LEAN interpretations”, all of which conspicuously lacked in the focus on Standard Work. John has had to come up with creative ways in which to practice LEAN and promote Standard Work upstream as the opportunity has presented itself.Over the years, John has also developed a strong sense of what it takes for an organization to make the transition to an enterprise that is BEing LEAN instead of just DOing LEAN things. The failure modes that have gotten in the way of change have provided as many valuable lessons as the successful endeavors have. The one thing that John has learned over the years is that DO-ing leads to BE-ing and that activity is the best medicine for dealing with the fear of change. This has led him to write the book, “Standard Work is a Verb: A Playbook for LEAN Manufacturing”.