When I was in Sweden recently, we had a lot of good discussion about the lean concept of “standardized work.”

There was much agreement from different presenters at the lean laboratories conference, and from the hospital people we visited, concerning standardized work—that it isn’t a robotic form of cookbook medicine or cookbook processes. Standardized work isn’t “mindless conformity” as Bill Marriott writes about in regard to the hotel chain.

We found an interesting example of a situation where thinking is required.

Let’s say that according to a process for phlebotomy (drawing blood from a patient) it’s preferable to draw blood from the patient’s left arm. Having a standardized process doesn’t mean we always draw from the left arm.

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