Sigma Magic Help Version 15

Leader Standard Work

Overview

Leader Standard Work is very critical for the success of lean deployment within an organization. Any major change management effort requires support from the top management. What better way to ensure leader commitment and support than for the leaders to follow standard work? This ensures that the leaders walk the talk. It is not just about leaders appearing at the beginning of a lean deployment journey and disappearing afterward. Leaders need to be constantly present during the lean journey, remove roadblocks, and ensure that the expected results from lean deployment will be realized. If we don't have leader standard work, then there will be variation in the actual work done by the leaders across divisions and the results will vary. We don't want to leave the success of lean to the availability of time and commitment of the leaders. Hence, we must document all the activities that a leader is expected to do regularly (daily, weekly, monthly, annually, etc.) and ensure compliance of the leaders to these activities. This ensures standardization across the organization. Use of leader standard work puts the highest level of focus on processes - a leader's primary responsibility is to ensure processes are performing as expected - the results will automatically follow. Standardization is key for any lean deployment and leader standard work ensures that the work done by leaders is also standardized. Each leader within the organization should have leader standard work. Depending on the level of leaders, the standard work content will be different.

This particular tool helps with a simple format for leader standard work. The user can customize the form to meet their individual needs and use it for their lean deployment. It may also be a good idea to make the leader standard work visible so that if things are not happening as they should root causes can be identified and corrective action is taken to bring the process back in control.

To add this tool your workbook, click on Lean and then select Leader Standard Work.

Inputs

Click on Analysis Setup to open the menu options for this tool.

Setup

A sample screenshot of the setup menu is shown below.

1	Analysis Type: Specify the tool format for this analysis. This selection is not enabled since there is only one format available.
2	Num Tasks: Specify the number of tasks you would like to assign to the leader. This dictates the number of rows that are formatted on the worksheet. Note that all data that lies below the table are cleared.
3	Month: Specify the plan month. This information is used to format the worksheet and place weekly markers such as weekends, holidays etc.
4	Year: Specify the plan year. This information is used to format the worksheet and place weekly markers such as weekends, holidays etc.
5	Weekly Marker: Specify the markers to place on the monthly calendar. If you specify None then no markers are placed. However, if you specify the day of the week, say Sunday. Then all Sundays in that given month/year are marked by a gray bar.
6	Current Date: Specify the date to use for analysis. If you specify the current date, then the software will calculate the performance of the plan for the given date. If you specify a date for the end of the month, then the plan will give you a snapshot of the performance with respect to the leader activities by end of the month.
7	View Example: Click on this button to open the example file. You can view the example to get an idea of how to fill out this tool or you can use the example as a starting point and modify it to meet your project needs.
8	Help Button: Click on this button to open the help file on this topic.
9	Cancel Button: Click on this button to exit without saving any changes.
10	OK Button: Click on this button to save changes and update your analysis results.

On the worksheet enter the following information:

• On the activity portion of the worksheet, specify the activities that you would like the leader to execute. Make sure you don't skip any important activity. Ensure that you benchmark with other areas to see the content of their leader standard work and replicate as appropriate. It is also recommended to have some duplication or overlap of activities between different leaders.
• Specify the frequency for each activity - how often the activity should also be listed. You should list daily, weekly, and monthly activities in this column. We don't want to do each activity too many times or too few times.
• Specify the timing for each activity as well in the when column. For example, you can say that for an activity such as daily work through the work area, the timing could be 4:00 - 4:15 pm every day.
• On the right-hand portion of the worksheet, create a plan for the specified activities by marking with an (x). For example, for daily activities, all days of the month will be marked with an (x). For weekly activities, one day of the week will be marked with an (x) and so on. This plan needs to be created by the lean deployment leader.
• Ask the leader to track each activity and update the worksheet as and when the activity is completed. This will ensure the highest level of accuracy of the information on this sheet. They can make notes for the activities in the Observations & Comments column. If an activity has been completed, they mark it with a (y). If an (x) already exists at a cell, then they would mark it as (xy). This indicates that they have completed the activity that was marked. If on a given day only an (x) exists it indicates that the plan for that day was not executed by the leader. If a cell has only a (y) then it indicates that the leader has executed an activity on a day that was not planned. The ideal marking is (xy). The leader has executed the activity on the day it was planned.
• At the end of the month, the leader shares the results of their standard work with the lean deployment leader who analyzes the report for any follow-up actions and continuous improvement.

Checklist

If you click on the Checklist button, you will see the following dialog box. The checklist contains a few pointers on things you need to pay particular attention to while performing this analysis. The checklist has been derived from experience working on past projects. Not all the checklist items need to apply to you. However, you should carefully review the checklist and apply any recommendations that make sense for your project. Make sure to read each checklist item and mark it as completed after you have read and taken actions as appropriate for your project.

Verify

If you click on the Verify button, the software will perform some checks on the data you have entered. A sample screenshot of the dialog box is shown in the figure below. The objective of this analysis as well as any checks that are performed is listed in this dialog box. For example, the software may check if you have correctly specified the input options and entered the required data on the worksheet. The results of the analysis checks are listed on the right. If the checks are passed, then they are shown as a green-colored checkmark. If the verification checks fail, then they are shown as a red-colored cross. If the verification checks result in a warning, they are shown in the orange color exclamation mark and finally, any checks that are required to be performed by the user are shown as blue info icons.

Outputs

Click on Compute Outputs to update the outputs. Any changes made to the settings on the input dialog box are updated and the colors on the worksheet will change based on whether the activity meets the minimum number of times an activity is expected to be completed in a month. There are no specific outputs to interpret on the Leader Standard Work. Just review the colors for the different activities and those activities that are shown in red (where we don't meet the minimum expected number of times per month), we may need to take some corrective action.

Notes

Here are a few notes regarding this analysis:

• To keep the format simple, we are tracking and reporting monthly. You can use this tool and update it daily if you like. One option for more frequent tracking is to track it manually using a visual management board and then transfer information on a weekly or monthly basis to this worksheet.

Examples

Following examples can be found in the Examples folder within the software.

• Select a department and create a leader standard work for that department (LSW 1.xlsm).