In manufacturing, standardization in production and process control leads to increased profitability and cuts down on many siloed problems that can plague even the most quality-focused organization. But when you have multiple, disparate plants around the country or the globe, standardization can seem unattainable, as each site operates more like an island with its own way of doing things.

I previously worked with one company that had numerous plants throughout the United States and Europe. Over time, each site had developed unique practices. One specific issue that came up was whether to use the metric system for quality data collection. Unfortunately, the company did not standardize. So, when it was time to run cross-plant reports, the results were in different units, presenting a challenge to comparative analysis.

In contrast, I worked with a separate organization that was very adamant about using a standardized approach and implementing the same quality management system at every site. Standardization made it easy to deploy the system to approximately 80 plants in merely 18 months. In addition to streamlining deployment, standardization enabled the company to perform enterprisewide reporting for better decision-making.

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