Leader Standard Work Template: A Tool of Nichijo Kanri

In today’s management challenges, a smart leader is expected to delegate the monitoring of the processes to his smartest staffs, and then takes the extra time to find innovative ways to make the company’s vision a reality. Unfortunately unplanned daily issues keep most of us devoted all the time, time goes in fire fighting, leaving little efforts for transformation.

In Lean manufacturing, there are well established approaches called as “Nichijo Kanri” — 日常管理 — Daily Management. Nichijo kanri will help you to utilize minimum time to monitor the current performance of processes. Nichijo kanri and hoshin kanri (方針管理 — policy deployment or strategic planning) are essential, both are work together for breakthroughs and sustainment (Liker & Trachilis, 2015).

There are 4 elements that makeup the nichijo kanri:

1. Leader Standard Work
2. Gemba Walks
3. Visual Controls
4. Daily Accountability

Leader Standard Work (LSW) is a standardized list of tasks that need to be completed in a particular time frame (daily, weekly, monthly), including schedule of Gemba Walks (or go to the site) with a purpose to seek to understand the processes. LSW will lead you to Visual Controls during your Gemba Walks. Visual controls provides a way to quickly compares “Expected” vs. “Actual” performance of processes. LSW also includes a follow up proces after checking visual controls by Daily Accountability. Daily accountability is leader’s accountability to review data and determine the next steps, priorities, resources, owner, and due dates.

LSW is useful to create consistency in processes monitoring. It is to create a routine or standard that allows for non-standard conditions to be more identified. The image below is example of a QA Leader’s LSW I prepared based on my routine. Please note that this example is not from a good practitioner of LSW. You will find this document (Excel file) on embedded sheet in the LSW Template. To download LSW Template, please click on the green button below.

Download LSW Template

This Template Features:

• XLSX File
• A4 Portrait
• Ready to Use Template
• Automatically Color-Code Specific Status Check
• Use Calibri (System Font)
• A4 Print Ready

Free Download