Standards are the basis for quality and continuous improvement. They make lean manufacturing possible. Standardisation allows you to "hold the gains", as Juran would say, rather than slip back to old ways. Standards should cover three aspects: work time, work sequence, and standard work-in-process. All are necessary. On work time, both takt time and current cycle time (i.e. the time taken for one cycle of the process) should be recorded.

At the outset it should be said that by "standards" is not meant the rigid, work-study imposed, job specification that is associated with classic mass production. Such standards have no place in the world of lean. For such "jobs" industrial sabotage and absenteeism are to be expected. Conversely, what is also not being discussed is the human-relations based reaction against these job standards, which are supposed to enrich jobs, but lead to no standards, which in turn lead to decreased safety and productivity. Standardisation has become unglamorous and unfashionable, with the possible exception of ISO9000. Work standards are frequently considered to be something that applies to operators, but not to managers.

Despite what some people think about Frederick Taylor, there remains "one best way", with available technology, to do any task which will minimise time and effort, and maximise safety, quality and productivity. To some this may sound like boring repetition, but the "new" standards are about participation in developing the best and safest way, mastery of several jobs, and the ability to adapt to changes in rate and mix in the short term.

Ohno realised that the achievement of standardised work, with minimum variance, was the essential ingredient to allow one piece flow and JIT production. Deming, in proposing the PDCA cycle, saw improvement moving from standard to standard. Juran emphasised the importance of "holding the gains" by establishing standards following a process improvement, rather than allowing them to drift back to the old ways. Recently the "Learning Organisation" has become fashionable, including "knowledge harvesting" from everyone in the organisation. How is this to be achieved? By documenting experience; in other words by establishing standards from which others may learn.

When standardising work, the same procedure adopted for scheduling should be used. That is, list the activities and sort out the frequently repeating activities from the irregular activities. Standardise the repeaters, but then try to "standardise" the irregular activities into blocks. For instance, meet with supervisors and fetch parts at regular times, not random times.

At Toyota, emphasis is placed on workers documenting their own standards, and in mastering both a wider range of work tasks and greater responsibility for supporting tasks. Operators themselves establish work cycles within the specified takt time. It may be that they are assisted in this task by industrial engineers and supervisors, but the operators must write up the final documentation of work standards themselves. This achieves four goals. First, there can be no question that work standards are not understood. Second, the operator is forced to think about the best way in which he or she should do the work within the takt time. A trained operator will frequently do a better job than an uninvolved work study officer. Third, the responsibility for setting the standard and then maintaining it is clearly up to the operator. There is motivation to update the standard when improved ways are found. And, fourth, because the standards reflect what actually happens rather than what might happen, learning can take place particularly when operators change jobs. In other words this is job enrichment and job mastery.

Lawler has pointed out that for job enrichment to succeed requires a new form of organisation, with emphasis on process rather than on function. So standards work best where there are cells or teams, where operators are responsible for productivity and quality of the whole area or process.