Standard work is the practice of defining, communicating, following, and continuously improving the best-known way to perform work, creating a consistent baseline that enables effective continuous improvement.  This class is an introduction to setting, communicating, following, and improving standard work. It is an integral aspect of continuous improvement, as it creates the baseline for improvement efforts to start from. Establishing standard work begins with process operators creating, clarifying, and sharing information about the most efficient method to perform a task that is currently known with everyone performing that process. From there, you can perform waste analysis and highlight areas of opportunity. Learn how standard work fits into LEAN, and how you can apply different LEAN tools to develop standard work in your organization as a baseline for improvement.

Improve your decision-making capabilities through critical thinking, structured reasoning, and creative problem analysis. Effective decision-makers are those rare individuals who are able to consistently identify and choose the best option among multiple alternatives. Their decisions are imaginative, reasoned, and defensible. In this course, you will be provided with the training and tools necessary to become an inventive, logical decision maker.

Identifying value is an important and fundamental step for implementing LEAN in any organization. Mapping the value stream allows an organization to identify all of the activities that make up a process to deliver a product or service from supplier to customer, and sets the baseline for continuous improvement. As tool for improvement, the value stream map allows an organization to identify value, show process waste, communicate process flow throughout the organization, and identify opportunities for improvement.

Improvement projects can range from quick, cyclical improvements, to planned rapid improvements, to long-term strategic initiatives.  In this course we discuss 1) the different types of improvement projects and the LEAN tools and techniques that apply and 2) the principles of Lean and the tools in your Lean toolbox to help you identify your business processes with the potential for improvement. You’ll also learn how to collaborate with your stakeholders in order to get the improvement work done.