Standard work is the agreed, current best way to do a job, written down so everyone does it the same way. In lean it usually has three parts: the takt time the work must keep up with, the sequence of steps an operator follows, and the standard amount of work in progress needed to keep parts flowing. It is built by watching and timing the real work, and it belongs to the people who do it. When someone finds a better way, the standard is updated.
Example: A standardized work combination sheet for an assembly cell shows a 60-second takt time, the 9 steps one operator does in order, the walking time between stations and the 2 parts kept between machines. A new operator learns the cell from that sheet.
Without a standard there is no baseline: you cannot tell whether a problem comes from the method or from how it was done that day, and improvements are lost when people change shifts. Standard work makes variation visible and gives kaizen something to improve on.
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