Standardization — Implementing Standard Work
A glance at how I&P’s Help Desk uses standardization to meet our customer needs
Standardization is a part of the foundation of the House of Toyota and is one of the first steps that is used to calm a system in preparation for making improvements. Standardization helps reduce variability, increase transparency and also provides a means to measure improvement based on changes enacted upon the system.
A standardized system remains calm and serves as a foundation to build on and improve the quality of our services and products. In our last blog post, we talked about the conceptual tools of standardization. Now, I will present some examples of how we have implemented these tools within our department.
Standard Work
At the I&P Help Desk, one of the very first tools we used to calm our system was Standard Work. We receive help requests or ‘tickets’ in our ticketing system that are broadly classified into various categories based on the different technical teams that work to resolve them. The Help Desk team monitors and resolves tickets belonging to certain categories and moves the rest into queues managed by other teams.
Prior to establishing Standard Work, every team member performed their tasks in a different way based on experience and expertise. For instance, a person with more experience might know what information to ask the customer for certain complex tickets and how to troubleshoot before moving the tickets to more technical queues. Another team member may instead focus on tickets that are more straight-forward. As a result, team members working on complex issues might resolve fewer tickets when compared to those who worked on easier ones. This can lead to issues such as ‘cherry-picking’ of tickets and fails to ensure we have multi-function team members who can handle all varieties of tickets assigned to them.
So how does the Help Desk team know what steps to follow in order to resolve every ticket? How do they ensure that everyone on the team is performing all the steps required to resolve a ticket? Who do they go to for assistance when needed?
To answer these questions and also create stability within the team, the following changes were implemented to create standard work:
- A ‘Daily responsibilities’ chart that distributes work evenly among the team members.
- Help Desk Agent Standard Work document to clearly communicate the steps involved in their work.
- Standard Work document for the queues managed by the Help Desk.
Job Instruction
Job instructions are a series of steps on how to perform a task consistently, correctly and safely. job instructions can be used to train or remind team members how to complete discreet tasks. Some examples of job instructions for the Help Desk are:
- An approval checklist to approve or deny a request for computer equipment.
- A list of ticket Types and Services based on which tickets are assigned to particular queues
- OTRS Procedures, and Service Request Escalation document that details Triage information to be recorded in every ticket by the Help Desk agent.
This form of documentation ensures standardization since all team members are following the same steps to complete a task thereby reducing variation in the way service is provided.
Visual Management
Our customers at the City of Pittsburgh can contact the Help Desk either via email or by phone. If a customer prefers to call us, we have an ACD (automated call distribution system) that directs our customers to the agents available. The ACD is setup so that calls are routed to each agent in the following sequence A-B-C-A-B-C- etc. Furthermore, the agents are made/assigned unavailable for 2min after every call to give them time to enter call details.
The Help Desk team can ensure availability at all times and reduce downtime and dropped calls by being able to see the available agents and their sequence in real time on a screen. It also helps the team to schedule their breaks and plan for meetings while maintaining their Standard Work.
5S (Sort, Set in order, Shine, Standardize, and Sustain)
As explained in our previous article, 5S is a tool to reorganize our workspace to be more effective in the way we perform work. This tool has been useful in organizing our cabinet where laptops that are loaned out to users are stored. Before implementing 5S to our loaner laptop cabinet, it just served as storage space and there was no clear way to say how many laptops we had ready for deployment, know their configurations at a glance, and track the equipment loaned out.
After ‘5S-ing’ our loaner laptop cabinet, some of the benefits we have derived are:
- Every team member knows what equipment goes where. This reduces the chance of misplacing items and reduces the time needed to look for equipment.
- Each laptop has a space assigned for it along with a label. This instantly tells the team, at a glance, which laptops are with a user and which ones are available.
- The labels on the cabinet also identify the laptop’s name, model number, and asset tag number which helps us to identify the configuration and track the equipment easily.
These are some of the tools that the Help Desk team has used to balance their work and organize it. Every member is now able to perform their tasks consistently in a similar way which provides a baseline to measure and sustain any improvements built into the system going forward. Drawing from the House of Toyota, the floors and pillars of the house are only added after a strong foundation has been built.
In the next blog post, we will talk about observation or ‘go-see’, the rules in use, and using the scientific method to solve problems.
Keep up with series on Pittsburgh I&P under Process Improvement and feel free to comment here with questions or concerns!
