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Standards Make Good Servants but Poor Masters

4 November, 2019 by James Lawther Leave a Comment

standard work

Standard work I found an interesting post about standardisation in public services.   The post argues that standardisation doesn’t work in the service industry.  Each customer or citizen is different and because each citizen is different they want different things.  So if you standardise everything and then force your staff to follow the standard process […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: andon, best practice, command and control, compliance, conformity, standardisation, work instructions

The Stop Button

6 April, 2014 by James Lawther 8 Comments

How does your stop button work? If you walk around a manufacturing plant you will see that every machine has a stop button. They are easy to spot.  They are big, round, red, attached to a bright yellow box and bear the legend STOP. Hit the stop button and the machine will come to an […]

Filed Under: Blog, Process Improvement, Tools & Techniques Tagged With: andon, best practice, customer focus, process control, rework

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