Patrick Adams  

Welcome to the lean solutions podcast where we discuss business solutions to help listeners develop and implement action plans for true lean process improvement. I am your host, Patrick Adams. Hello, and welcome to the lean solutions podcast. My name is Patrick Adams and today’s guest is Craig, Ted Rowe. Welcome to the show, Craig. Thank you. Alright, so Craig is one of our team members here at pa consulting. I’m excited to have him on the show to talk a little bit more about Standard Work. But Craig, before we do that, can you tell the audience maybe a little bit about your background?

Craig Tedrow  

Sure. I began my manufacturing back in the early 80s at Steelcase. Back when you got a job there, you stay there, you retired there. Sure. I actually put 27 years in there. I ended up leaving in 2011. I went back to school for a couple of years and got out and had to find a job then. So I landed a job at a carbon manufacturing company. That’s actually where you and I met. Yes. manufacturing. Some nice sports cars.

Patrick Adams  

Yeah, we were making the hoods and the roofs out of carbon fiber for the Corvettes.

Craig Tedrow  

Yep, yeah, Corvettes. And then the Dodge wipers. Yeah, and I’m bored. So that was a lot of fun. I started there actually in the plant. You were the lien manager. There were a few ideas out there. And next thing I know you tapped me on the shoulder and said, Hey, you want to help out on the plant floor and come in and work with my team? And yeah, I said, Sure.

Patrick Adams  

I think if I remember I was watching you. Probably during one of my gimble walks, I was just observing and watching you as if you were in the sanding department, if I remember, and you were moving from table to table coaching and training new team members on how to properly sand the hood. And I remember, you know, you just seem to have something about the way that you were talking to the team members, you just like you were listening to them, you were giving them feedback, you were coaching them in a way that showed a lot of respect for the employees. And I just remember thinking that guy, you know, he needs to be on the team promoting lean and and talking to team members about you know what continuous improvement culture should look like.

Craig Tedrow

That’s a nice story.

Patrick Adams  

Absolutely. So tell us a little bit more about your work with pa consulting. So you do some training, consulting coaching, yeah,

Craig Tedrow  

training, consulting, coaching, have traveled around a little bit with you, and without you doing some different things for different companies around town and sound as far away as the other side of the United States. Yeah, yeah, it’s been a lot of fun doing that. What I enjoyed most, I think, is getting out on the plant floor and working with the folks on the floor. Yeah. So if, if we don’t get there by him, that anything we try to implement is just not going to work. Yeah. And I’ve been on both sides of the coin there.

Patrick Adams  

That’s right.

Craig Tedrow  

So we’re Steelcase. Those 27 years, we’re in manufacturing, a little bit of a zone leader type role. But most of that was just on the floor, doing the work.

Patrick Adams  

And that makes a big difference. When you’re not just book smart, right? You don’t just know the Lean principles you’ve actually been involved in, like you said, both sides. So you’ve been part of implementing, but also part of being coached in how to implement some of the Lean principles that you and I teach and coach on now. But that’s what makes for a pretty good coach, someone that has actually had the experience right now, just public knowledge. 

Craig Tedrow  

I think it does, too, because I like to say I’m not a booksmart. I’m more of the experience type than someone who listens to the operators and hears what some of their concerns are. And I can understand what their concerns are, because I have the exact same ones. It’s almost like wherever we’re at, whatever industry we’re in, we all have the same concerns. Yeah, I can be you know, administrative in a hospital or a clinic somewhere, or any, any type of work doesn’t have to be manufacturing, right. And this, this just applies totally across the board. And so whatever kind of work we do, I love that’s why that’s what’s fun about it.

Patrick Adams  

Absolutely. So tell us a little bit about how we’re gonna dive into the topic for today, which is standard work. Tell us a little bit about your first exposure to standard work. When did you learn about it? When was it first? You know, introduced to you okay, yeah,

Craig Tedrow  

I started in the early 80s at Steelcase. Now back then we batched everything. So we made 200 of these and 300 of these and 400 of these. And we got into the 90s, we started getting into the lean manufacturing. And that was when I had my first recollection of standard work, actually opening up a book, seeing how to assemble something or something like that. And then, actually, a couple years ago, I was working with a team to develop their standard work, and we got into a discussion about it, and I realized that I was actually doing standard work when I was 16. And cooking at the spinnaker, the Grand Rapids Hilton really all following a recipe is following Standard Work, right? That’s right. That’s absolutely right. Oh, it’s just so it really, it applies everywhere. Sure, you know, if you don’t follow the recipe, you know, you might get raisins in your potato salad. Right now, we wouldn’t want that so that they’re staying to work for a reason. Yeah. Right, that’s the purpose.

Patrick Adams  

So when when I see Standard Work, obviously I think of a visually posted one page document that has some specific items on it, you might have the the steps, the sequence of steps, you might have the flow of work through a workstation, you might have talk time, which, you know, that is another item that you would see on on a standard document, right? You see maybe the number of whips in between each process step or things like that. But what you’re talking about, though, is, you know, standard work in general is something that we see lots of different places, and maybe not the template that I’m talking about the the standards that are in place for creating Standard Work. But what would some other examples, I guess be of where we might see standard work outside of maybe recipes? What would something else be?

Craig Tedrow  

Let’s say you’re at a hospital? And maybe if you’re in the billing department? Sure, you would have to do things a standard, you have to do them a certain way. Yeah, I did mine a different way than yours. Something’s not gonna come out, right? That’s right, and one of us would have a better way than the other. So Standard Work is meant to be changed as well. So we need to update that standard. That’s right, until we update it, we need to follow what’s there. So in the neck, some people get scared away when they think about all the tack time and the inventory in between and things like that. Some of my favorite teams to work with, we’ve actually got a sheet of paper and a pencil and Milner’s standard workout. So let’s just try it. See if it works, right? They’re like, well, should we, you know, put it in a Word document and print them out? And Nope, let’s not bother with any of that. Now we’re gonna change it right? That’s right. We don’t have a standard here. Yeah, yeah. So that’s Don’t let perfection, you know, stand in the way of any type of progress.

Patrick Adams  

Sure, sure. No, that’s, that’s great advice. And that really becomes the best known way of doing things, right? Correct. Yeah, then it keeps you from backsliding, if people are viewing it that way, every time, you know, third shift, first shift whatever team it is, if they do it that same way, they should get the same result, the same outcome, which is, again, known to be the it’s the best known way of doing things for that time. And to your point, if someone finds a new or a better way of doing things, then they would update that standard work, probably train the rest of the team or the other shifts, or whatever it might be, because now they found a even better way of

Craig Tedrow  

Exactly, yeah, it’s hard to make an improvement if everybody’s doing it a different way. Right? So you don’t know why you’re getting this result? No, if I’m doing it a different way, the new, we might have a different result. So then they might try to change something. Well, we might just not be following the standard. Yeah. So we need to start off with a stable foundation there, right? If everybody does the same thing every time, and then you can, you know, change what might work. So

Patrick Adams  

What do you think happens when, you know, I’ve been involved with some companies where they have Standard Work posted, they’ve trained the team to it, but people just aren’t doing it? So what do you think is happening with team members that, you know, maybe are not following the standards? What’s going on in their minds? Or why wouldn’t they follow the standard work that’s laid out?

Craig Tedrow  

In my experience, what I’ve seen is that the standard work is written by somebody without involving the team. So if you don’t want to go out and ask somebody, you know, how do you do this job and observe them and explain what you’re doing to them, you know, that you want to watch and document what they’re doing and get the best way. So if an engineer or I understand that they have to do that, maybe it’s somebody in quality, there might be a lot of people involved in the standard work, especially different products, you have to make sure you satisfy the customer’s needs, right? Sure, yeah, skip a step, because I want to, we need to give the customer what they want. Right? So but I think just talking the dialogue with the operator, asking, you know, what do you think of this, and then most importantly, is listening, find out what they have to say about it, as I’ve seen Standard Work come down that it’s, you know, everybody looks at and they’re like, well, I don’t agree with that. This makes it so much harder to do. Well, there could be a great reason that that has to be done that way. Yeah. And we can work to change that. Sure. But we first need to follow a standard.

Patrick Adams  

Yeah. And for operators, then that’s, that’s also showing respect, right? It shows them that you that you care, I mean, they’re the experts out there, they’re the ones that really know, you know, the ins and outs of the job, or how to run the equipment or, you know, whatever it is that, you know, industry that they’re in, they know what’s going on. They’re the ones that are closest to the work. So we have all seen them in creating those steps and developing that standard work is really showing them the respect that they deserve.

Craig Tedrow  

Yeah. Do you agree? Oh, yeah. Then they’re gonna want to follow it, their input into it. Yeah. Nobody wants to do something when somebody else from another room comes in and tells them how to do it. And they’ve never done that job before. Right. So I think that’s where it kind of gets a bad rap. Yeah, when I was sure I had to follow Standard Work. And there were times that it was not very easy to follow it. You know, we did the carbon fiber, you would have to stay in different materials. And it’s like, well, how can we sand this? It’s so much harder to stay in than that other material. Well, the engineer came out and explained it and they ended up finding a different type of abrasive we could use for it. So different sandpaper that made it better. So that was how we did that change. Yeah, but there was a way to make the change. We couldn’t just start doing it a different way. Because we want it to you And that was we wanted to write

Patrick Adams  

sure, but that’s important too, because it’s been, as we talked about, it’s been proven that that’s the best way of doing things. And to your point earlier, there could be some quality standards or things that we don’t know about as operators that, you know, need to be adhered to. And which is the reason why we’re following those steps. Right? Absolutely. Yeah. So an explanation from an engineer, whoever might help with, with something like that, what are some other things that that we can do as leaders to help employees follow leader standard work or to help them understand the importance or, or even get buy-in from employees around following Standard Work?

Craig Tedrow  

I think he touched on it a little bit there. Whenever I was saying ask the operator, you know, ask them to give their input and then give your input. For instance, if you’re manufacturing cars, something has to be done a certain way for safety reasons. I remember the vehicles that we were doing, we had to build them a certain way so that they would crumble a certain way. And in a crash. Yeah, well, if the operator decided they want to change that, and build it a different way, because it looks the same, it doesn’t mean it’s going to perform the same out there. Or if you’re doing aviation and defense, electronics, things like that. I want to make sure that whoever built the plane, I then filed their standard work. Absolutely. You know, I don’t want someone skipping a step, because it’s a little bit easier to not put those bolts in over there. You know, so it’s, if you explain why it’s so important, and that you’re willing to listen and change it if there’s a better way. Yeah, I think that communication is missing so many times. Absolutely. That’s why it gets overlooked.

Patrick Adams  

Yeah. And I would also add that, you know, having your employees understand the benefits, and the reasons why Standard Work is in place in like some of the things that we talked about what else would be another key to creating that buy in to follow standard work, but what would you say are some of maybe the other advantages of having Standard Work in place that that employers can think about as they’re starting to deploy Standard Work and communicate the importance of Standard Work out to the teams

Craig Tedrow  

consistency is one, again, we want to have a stable foundation if we want to build anything, right. So if we’re not consistent, and putting out a consistent product, we don’t want our customers gonna think, you know, if we’re talking, say, French fries, and McDonald’s, they are pretty much the same any McDonald’s you walk into, yeah, that’s, you know, and you know, they’re going to be the same, right? So there’s a certain way that they do that, and if you ever watched, you know, the salts are pre measured, and they just turn it till it doesn’t come out anymore, and the temperature and the timers are set. So everything comes out the same? Well, if I start to change that, I’m gonna get a different product. And if it’s a restaurant, you might not know if your customers are going to come back or that they don’t come back anymore, right? Now, if it’s a larger client, like General Motors or something like that, they’re going to let you know that, hey, this is not going through the way it needs to, you know, but there’s times that customers won’t even know, you know, their employees are not following the standard and something’s gonna taste different, or something performs differently, or something doesn’t hold up the way it does, you know, when office furniture, you would have to use certain adhesives to make fabric stick to certain things. Sure, well, if I skip that step, or didn’t spray it on the pattern that I had to, you know, that can laminate over time. And now we have a product that’s just not up to the standards that the company wants. Yeah, so that’s a huge problem. 

Patrick Adams  

The other one to think about those that are listening in that are, you know, maybe in the healthcare industry, I mean, not following Standard Work could also be harmful, or, or even detrimental, you know, to humans to people, you know, obviously, that’s a that’s a simple one, that’s an easy one to explain why you should follow these steps and not skip steps. But again, you know, it’s not always that easy to understand it, it’s important. So, you know, as leaders, I think it’s key that we are communicating the why behind it, and making sure that the team understands the reasons, the benefits, the outcome of standard work, and what it’s meant to do. But also, like you mentioned earlier, involving them in the process from the beginning, because that will create the buy in.

Craig Tedrow  

Right when we were working with a car manufacturer, we had a problem with some parts getting produced that weren’t up to standard. First thing we did, we got the team in a room, we pulled out the standard work, we took a video of the process, and we watched the video with the team, as we’re falling through the standard work and we noticed that there was a step they were missing. So when you make carbon fiber, you have to get the carbon fiber into the mold. And we use like pizza cutters, we take the blade out, of course put something else in there, and you make sure you get all the air out. So when it does go to cure, you don’t have any voids in that area. But we noticed that we had a lot of scrap there and there was something that you couldn’t fix. So by getting the team in there and following along, they saw that the person was not putting the roller in those corners, so they weren’t pushing the material in all the way. So that was a very simple kaizen it was a great, great win, ya know for that, and we just got iPads and showed everybody. You know why this has to be done this way, and we retrained everybody up to the standard And we explain why, you know, they thought just pushing them into their fingers was enough, that would work. And when they turn the vacuum on, it would bring it down. Right? It wasn’t enough to get the material in those corners,

Patrick Adams  

Wow, that’s a great example of, you know, looking at your standard work and auditing your standard work, I guess, right? You know, and making sure that people are following it, and then explaining the reasons behind it, you know, because you guys had an actual defect that happened because of people not following one of the steps.

Craig Tedrow  

So instead of trying to think, outside the box, what could be causing this material or something like that? We just really went back to basics. And when we started, I thought, Okay, are we going to find the answer here or not? Well, if now we’re auditing Standard Work, at least Yeah, we’ll get that done. Right. Well, I’ll look through it, make sure it’s done. And sure enough, that was our biggest tip off right there. I think we have a problem.

Patrick Adams  

Yeah. So I love that example. That’s great. So we’ve talked about, we’ve mentioned, standard work. You mentioned tack time, we mentioned, auditing and different things. And obviously, there’s lots of other lean buzzwords that tie in with standard work. And I’m curious to hear what your thoughts are around just lean initiatives or lean methodology in general, and how Standard Work helps to support you know, any company’s Lean journey.

Craig Tedrow  

I think, to me, the biggest one would be continuous improvement, it’s hard to improve on something that has so much variation. If we can remove the variation from so many of our processes. We’re over halfway there, I think. Sure. Because then we know what we’re gonna get Sure. So I’ve heard a description before of scope creep, by an engineer where somebody starts changing something a little bit and a little bit more and a little bit more. And before you know what, you know, your way out of tolerance, you can change something, but it might not affect anything. So unless everybody’s doing it the same way. If I change one thing, I want to if that one thing helps, or if that one thing hurts, or a coincidence, it could have helped, but it might have been something that you changed. Sure. So until we follow, you know, the same standard across the board, we’re not going to know what we’re going to get. Yeah, yeah, that so I think just building that strong foundation, by eliminating that variation.

Patrick Adams  

Right. Right. And for anybody that’s listening, that maybe doesn’t have any type of standard work in place. But then maybe they’re hearing this and they know that, you know, this should be something I mean, it’s pretty much fundamental to lean and developing, you know, a workplace that is stable, right? It’s all about removing the variation and creating more of a stable workplace. But for those that are listening, that maybe don’t have that in place yet. And maybe they feel that it’s something that they need, what would be your suggestions on where to start? What should they do to begin their work around Standard Work?

Craig Tedrow  

Well, the equipment you need would be pencil and paper, that would be a start, get your team together, explain how important it is to have a standard and ask your team what they do. You don’t want to let’s jot it down and see how everybody does everything and get your team to agree on you know, this is the best way that we’re doing right now. And then put that paper out there and then audit it and see if people are following that you might find out that you have a better way, or that they’re doing in a good way, maybe a first shift or second shift. Your production numbers could be different, or your soup tastes different. Yeah, ending on when it was made. Right? was everybody following that standard first, right? So I would say don’t overthink it, you can get really in the weeds with timing absolutely everything in your inventory in between. And that’s a good thing, if you’re at that point yet. But if you’re just starting out, you’re not at that point. Right? So if I had to give one tip to improve your company, if you’re just starting, eliminate your variation, you know, and just get some stability to begin with. Yeah, often we’ll go into a client, and they’ll want to see changes right away. You know, and, you know, we have to observe First, we have to interview the operators, we need to find out what works, what doesn’t work, what are their pain points, things like that. Yeah, so you need to get some stability first. Sure, even if your process isn’t the best, write it down, and then make sure everybody follows it. So then you can change one thing and see if that either improves. Or if it doesn’t improve or makes it worse, right, then you’ll know well that’s one we’re not going to try anymore. Right?

Patrick Adams  

Right. Right. Well that’s a really good point. And there’s a couple things that I heard you say that I want to maybe expand on just a bit you talked about using a pencil and paper I remember one company that we worked with were using a whiteboard and a marker very similar, right but they put it out there on the floor and they jotted down their steps and it was very easy and on a daily basis because once they set the standards for how they needed to complete this particular process then the team started going well you know i don’t do it that way I do it this way and then there was some discussion that opened up and the team collectively decided that you know, I don’t remember the exact but step number four actually needed to you know, go after step number five, and so they, they, they quickly just erased those on the board switched them around, they adjusted this step they change this step to add something else and it was very easy. Especially in the beginning for everybody to work together off of that whiteboard to land on a collective agreement on what’s the one best way to do things, right. And then once they all agreed on, and after erasing and re scribbling and writing, then that was established as the standard, and they could move ahead with that. Yeah.

Craig Tedrow  

So you know, this, it’s not the person, it’s the process. Right, right. Well, if we don’t have a standard process, then how do we know what, you know where the fault is? Right? So many times, you know, people think, well, it’s just, he just does it that way, you know, or that person is making the mistake? Yeah, no, the process that allowed them to make the mistake is that nobody comes to work to do a bad job. That’s right, you know, right. Very, very few.

Patrick Adams  

Yeah, it also makes me think of a story of another client that we worked with, where we were documenting their changeover and creating standard work around their changeovers. And we had for between first shift and third shift, they were very different in their ramp up times. the third shift was much better than the first shift, considerably better. And they didn’t know why until they started documenting their steps behind their changeover. And when we talked to the third shift, the third shift said that I saw the dial needed to go to four when they changed. And by turning the dial to number four, you know, they would change over to the next part is the simplest way that I can explain it. But the third shift wouldn’t just turn the dial to four, they would go 10 past, and then come back to four. And it wasn’t until we started documenting the process and videoing, like you said, and talking to the operators, that we found out that that third ship was going 10 past and then coming back to the fore. And so we asked him, Why does he do that? And he said, Well, there’s slop in the dials. So if you don’t go 10 past and come back to it, then your ramp ups are going to take longer. Well, they had never talked, you know, first shift and third shift didn’t really talk so. So that was something that had to be communicated. Obviously, we did some, some work on eliminating the slop, right, get rid of the root cause. But in the meantime, the teams had to be trained to follow the new standard, which was to go 10 past and come back, right, you know, to deal with the slop. And obviously ramp up times increased rapidly, you know, after that, so just a simple example. But when you start to document those standards, and you ask the team, you know, what can we do to to figure out the best way of doing things, you know, some pretty amazing things can happen once on the use of there.

Craig Tedrow  

If it says turn the dial to four, well, they could be doing that even on the third shift, they’re not going to write in necessarily that they do that. But if you video the process, you pick up on those little nuances. You know, I think the video was just really underutilized. I think it could be used on so many occasions. Absolutely. It was a lot of times we’ll go back, go back to the tape and watch it again and see all right now what did this person do here? Why he wasn’t looking at that person I was looking at the other one, let’s go look at the tape. We’ve already got it. Right, right. You know, we can study that over and over again. And we don’t need to get out there and just do the time you know, sometimes time studies, you know, can be a little bit cumbersome. By the time you really get your rhythm down. It’s break time. So yeah, but if you take a video, you can watch it over and over again, really capture everything,

Patrick Adams  

Right? So for those that are listening right now, any last comments around maybe why Standard Work is important,

Craig Tedrow  

I would think that the most important thing is to satisfy the customer. And if I’m, if I’m in a passenger on an airplane, I’m the customer. And I would love to be satisfied and have a successful takeoff and landing. Right? So that satisfies me, if you’re driving in your car, you want to be a satisfied customer, of course, and for safety reasons, right? If you were in a restaurant business, you want your customers to come back, they might not tell you, if they’re not happy, they just won’t come back. Right? If you’re in a hospital and you’re patient, I want to come home, you know, so I want them to follow their standards. I want everybody to do the same. That’s right. You know, if you have somebody giving you medicine on a different shift, and they’re doing something different or giving you something different and you know what’s supposed to be something else, you’re gonna say something right. So I would just say that, that, to me, is the most important part behind Standard Work.

Patrick Adams  

I love that powerful, good way to close if anybody that’s listening wants to get a hold of you. Assuming they can find you on LinkedIn, we can drop your LinkedIn profile into the show notes. Anything else as far as getting all of you or finding out more probably go to our website. Yeah, go to the website, find solutions, diagnose solutions.com. And we’ll throw that in the show notes as well. 

Craig Tedrow  

We’ve got some great training programs that we’re putting together. Yeah, there. Yeah. It’s standard work. Yes, that’s true, and you might watch it with your own comedians. So there’s some great, great tips out there. Just don’t overthink it. Yeah. If it’s something out there, if you have nothing, just get something

Patrick Adams  

Good. Well, thanks again, Craig. It’s been amazing having you on the show for the first time. And hopefully this won’t be the last time we’ll pick another topic maybe, you know, a couple months from now and we’ll talk about something else. Absolutely.

Craig Tedrow  

I love the story you told the beginning. Yeah. So great. All right. Thanks, Patrick.

Patrick Adams  

Thanks so much for tuning into this episode. of the lean solutions podcast. If you haven’t done so already, please be sure to subscribe. This way you’ll get updates as new episodes become available. If you feel so inclined. Please give us a review. Thank you so much.

Transcribed by https://otter.ai