My (limited) understanding of the Toyota concept of Standard Work is an emphasis of capturing what the current best practice is. It is not about sticking with a simple practice with an emphasis of using the standard as a place to improve. The emphasis on creating a standard process ensures repeatability and that you can teach it to people.
Where people go wrong is that they focus only on enforcing the standard (avoiding improvement) or forgetting to communicate an update to the standard when things change (people are taught the wrong things).
It’s more about capturing the current actual practice and then using that as a baseline for improvement.
From Taiichi Ohno’s Workplace Management:
When creating Standard Work, it will be difficult to establish a standard if you are trying to achieve “the best way.” This is a big mistake. Document exactly what you are doing now.
Having the standard is more about just ensuring that we all have the same understanding of what we’re trying to improve.
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