Three plants, one standard? Why copying does not work

A standard that is alive at one site is the result of a process. People saw a problem, argued about it, built a solution, adapted it and at some point made it their own. The paper on the wall is only the tip of that. The rest, the shared understanding, the story behind it, the small adjustments, sits in people's heads.

If you send the paper to another site, only the tip arrives. The second plant receives a solution to a problem it never experienced in that form, in a shape that fits machines, shift models and people it does not have. The people on site sense that immediately. They rarely say it out loud, but they do what people do with instructions from elsewhere: they put them up and work around them.

On top of that comes a second layer. Between sites there is almost always a history. The lead plant is seen as headquarters' favourite, the others feel like second choice. A standard that comes from the lead plant is therefore never just a standard. It is also a message: do it like them. And that message creates resistance, regardless of how good the standard is.

The question is not whether you should transfer standards. Of course you should. The question is at which level. I distinguish three levels:

• Principles: every deviation is made visible daily. Problems are solved where they arise. Every standard has an owner. This level is the same everywhere and it is not negotiable.
• Minimum requirements: every plant has a daily shopfloor meeting with fixed KPIs for safety, quality, delivery performance and productivity. Every plant follows up on deviations. What the board looks like is open.
• Design: columns, colours, time of day, facilitation, escalation paths. That belongs to the site.

The most common mistake in a rollout is to confuse the third level with the first. Then people argue about the colour of the magnets while nobody has understood the principle. Anyone who separates the levels cleanly gives each plant what is necessary and leaves it the rest. That is not a loss of control. It is the prerequisite for the standard becoming the site's own.

In a group of companies with several plants in different countries, the largest plant had developed a shopfloor board that worked very well. Headquarters wanted to introduce it at all sites and had the board printed in several languages.

At a smaller site with one-off production it did not fit. The KPI of units per shift made no sense at a batch size of one, the line for line stoppages stayed empty because there was no line. After a few weeks the board stood in the corner.

The restart went differently. The local plant management received the principles and minimum requirements, not the template. In a workshop with supervisors and production planning, their own board emerged: instead of units, on-time delivery per order was at the centre, instead of line stoppages, missing parts. It looked completely different from the one in the lead plant. And it fulfilled the same principles. Headquarters could read both boards side by side because the logic was the same. That is what I mean by a standard without the copying error.

In rollouts across sites, the role of headquarters or the lead plant is decisive, and it is almost always set up wrongly. Either headquarters prescribes everything and creates resistance. Or it leaves everything to the sites and gets a patchwork that nobody can compare any more.

The task of headquarters is a different one: it defines the principles and the minimum requirements, and does so together with representatives of the sites, not over their heads. It provides people who help with the build-up without bringing the solution with them. And it ensures exchange between the plants, so that the sites learn from each other and not only from the lead plant.

This last point is underestimated. If a small plant finds a better solution for material supply than the lead plant, that has to become visible. Otherwise the hierarchy between the sites remains, and with it the resistance. I have had good experiences with regular plant visits in which supervisors and team leaders look at another plant, not the plant managers. That is where learning happens, because people meet as equals.

Anyone responsible for a lean rollout across several plants in most cases has no disciplinary authority over the sites. The plant managers report to someone else, have their own goals and their own priorities. I know this role from my own experience, and it is more demanding than any line function.

What works in this role is not pressure via headquarters, but benefit for the site. Every plant manager has a problem that keeps them awake at night: delivery performance, quality costs, staff shortages. If the rollout starts at exactly that problem, the plant manager becomes an ally. If it arrives as an additional reporting obligation, they become a brake.

That is why I start at every site with the same question: what would help you most here? And I build the entry point around the answer. The standard then comes not as a directive but as a solution to a problem the site itself has named.

Whether lean has arrived at a site, you do not see in the manual and not in the number of boards. You see it in a few things:

• The plant changes its standards itself, without asking headquarters, and reports the change.
• Deviations are named in the meeting, including uncomfortable ones, and nobody justifies themselves for them.
• Supervisors and team leaders can explain why a standard is the way it is, not just that it is.
• Other sites ask this plant for advice, not only the lead plant.

If you see these signs, you can let go of the rollout. If you do not see them, no further audit will help. Then this site still lacks something of its own, and that only emerges through work with the people on the ground.