Toyota Standard Work: The Foundation of Kaizen

Having no standardization work process means no quality. Everyone will do this task differently. Tracking the source of errors is difficult without the work standard. When a leader perform gemba walk on shop floor to observe the situation, there is no benefit from the walk when there is no standard. In the classic old way of management, companies were and (many are still) following the Tylor's principle, Tylor said that industrial engineers should be the only ones who initiate, create, modify, adapt and improve the process. And workers should follow what the industrial engineers are saying. Standard work is being used to measure employees performance. This is really a contrary to respect for people which is one of the main pillars in the Toyota production system and was the reason why Toyota is a high performance company. Toyota is strong by its people not by its process. Toyota Creates standard work to eliminate wastes, develop employees skills and develop high level of knowledge.

Mohammed Hamed Ahmed Soliman is an industrial engineer, consultant, university lecturer, operational excellence leader, and author. He works as a lecturer at the American University in Cairo and as a consultant for several international industrial organizations.

Soliman earned a Bachelor's of science in Engineering and a Master's degree in Quality Management. He earned post-graduate degrees in Industrial Engineering and Engineering Management. He holds numerous certificates in management, industry, quality, and cost engineering.

For most of his career, Soliman worked as a regular employee for various industrial sectors. This included crystal-glass making, fertilizers, and chemicals. He did this while educating people about the culture of continuous improvement. Soliman has more than 15 years of experience and proven track record of achieving high levels of operational excellence to a broad range of business operations including manufacturing, service and healthcare. He has led several improvement projects within leading organizations and defined a lot of savings in the manufacturing wastes stream.

Soliman has lectured at Princess Noura University and trained the maintenance team in Vale Oman Pelletizing Company. He has been lecturing at The American University in Cairo for 8 years and has designed and delivered 40 leadership and technical skills enhancement training modules. In the past 4 years, Soliman's lectures have been popular and attracted a large audience of over 200,000 people according to SlideShare's analysis.. His research is one of the most downloaded works on the Social Science Research Network, which is run by ELSEVIER. His research is one of the most downloaded works on the Social Science Research Network, which is run by ELSEVIER.

Soliman is a senior member at the Institute of Industrial and Systems Engineers and a member with the Society for Engineering and Management Systems. He has published more than 60 publications including articles in peer reviewed academic journals and international magazines. His writings on lean manufacturing, leadership, productivity, and business appear in Industrial Engineers, Lean Thinking, Industrial Management, and Sage Publications. Soliman's blog is www.personal-lean.org.