Standardization is achieved by setting generally accepted guidelines in regards to how a

product or service is created or supported, as well as to how a business is operated. The goal of
standardization is to enforce a level of consistency or uniformity to certain practices or operations
within the selected environment.

Every individuals has their own thoughts and tend to say out loud to share. This is good for
the research and development department where needed people to think out of box to produce
better and more innovative product or services, but it will be a chaos in the production or service.
This is because, when everyone working in the production has different way to do things right, it will
be a conflict although the end result is same. Standardization will help to solve this issue by setting a
guideline or standard of procedure.

Quality can be controlled by a set of standard of procedure in the productions. The

procedure requires rules that define the scope, quality a methods to be followed. This can ensure
the quality of the industry by following the quality requirements and reducing the human error. It is
set by the company or following the ready standard by standard organization such as International
Organization for Standardization (ISO). Standard procedure establish a set of rules and steps to
complete a given task or sequence of tasks. For an example, there is a lot of way to solve a simple
math problem, two times three, one will done in two by three equal to six, one will done in two plus
two plus two equal to six. Therefore standard procedure set only one method, it been set after
discussion by professional based on its simplicity and most accurate way.

Standardization also makes it less likely that problems result from human error and, when
they do, can lead you to the source of the problems more quickly. By standardization, productivity
could be improved because the employees won’t need to ask around or comb documentation to get
answer. Where all process and product is standardized by the company, when employee having any
question, they just straight refer to the documents. Standardization facilitates incremental
improvements in your production system, and when workers uses standardized methods, system-
wide changes are easier to implement.

Using standard methods, makes it easier to introduce gradual changes in your production
that enhance quality, efficiency and productivity. Because the improvements are introduced
uniformly throughout your production system, they become a new standardized method.
Standardization also makes it easier to spot changes that should be made, such as altering the
location of production machinery for the sake of efficiency. The employees will learned fast when
there is changes in the procedure or methods of the production.

The key thing to remember about standardization and employee morale is that
standardization will help employees to feel a sense of achievement and pride. Standardization does
not have to mean dreary monotony and lack of creativity; it can (and should) mean standards
anyone can master, and take pride in honing. As Walter McIntyre writes in Lean and Mean Process
Improvement: “If managed properly, standardized work establishes a relationship between people
and their work processes. This relationship can enhance ownership and pride in the quality of work
performance. The result is high morale and productivity.”
 As a general rule, everyone wants to know if they are doing a good job or not—and they
want to know how to achieve that distinction. Not knowing if one is doing one’s job correctly can be
very stressful. Having to apologize for inadequate or incorrect work can be humiliating as well as
stressful. If one did not understand performance standards to begin with, it can also be extremely
frustrating. If processes are governed by standards that teach employees to do efficient, high-
quality work, the employees are more likely to take a sense of ownership and pride in the work that
they do. Instead of uncertainty and inefficiency, the employee will have a prescribed way to
accomplish their assigned tasks which actually works. The result is likely to be greater employee
morale. What this means is that the connection between standards and employee morale is
fundamentally about employees being able to take pride in achievement. If the standardized process
is efficient, avoids needless frustration, and guides employees to achieve something meaningful and
worthwhile, employees will have every reason to take pride in the work they are doing.

Standardization in production methods increases both productivity and efficiency in a

manufacturing environment by improving quality and by reducing research and development time
for your products. In research and development department, productivity of the researcher will be
improved especially in the engineering sector. Engineering sector has standardized almost
everything in to make sure everything to be done correctly and avoid accidents. Engineering
accidents create damages to the surrounding and will lead to life injury. Therefore, engineers have
done thousands and thousands of researches, conferences and discussion to standardize all
engineering related knowledge and process. For an example, bolts and nuts have been
standardized by the engineers to ensure all bolts and nuts manufacture to achieve same material
and mechanical properties of their product; same as when an engineer is designing an application
involve bolts and nuts, he can calculate the force required and refer to the bolts and nuts standard
chart by selecting which size is suitable for his application. This shorten his designing period and can
spend more time on calculating and thinking for new ideas.

Research and development consists of the investigative activities that a person or business
chooses to do with the desired result of a discovery that will either create an entirely new product,
product line or service, or strengthen an existing product or service with additional features.
Research refers to any new science or thinking that will result in a new product or new features for
an existing product. Research can be broken down into either basic research or applied research.
Basic research seeks to delve into scientific principles from an academic standpoint, while applied
research seeks to use that basic research in a real-world setting. The development portion refers to
the actual application of the new science or thinking so that a new or increasingly better product or
service can begin to take shape. Research and development is essentially the first step in developing
a new product, but product development is not exclusively research and development. An offshoot
of R&D, it can refer to entire product life cycle, from conception to sale to renovation to retirement.

When problem happened, employees will have to record down and engineers will analyze
the data to understand and trace the root of the problem. Then engineer will have to come out with
solution and implement it into the production line to make sure the same problem will not happen
again. This improve the productivity and quality of the product or service.

The main goal of researching is to improve although the current state is good enough. Keep
challenging the current state for better and better result. Quality will be improved when research is
carried out, the researches will keep finding better way and improving the current way to reduce
cost, time and more ergonomics results.

By standardization, researchers or engineers can have the same value of science and
technology. Not only service and manufacture procedure, and engineering properties is
standardized, safety and health, ethics and moral of engineering is standardized. When engineers
follow the standards set by the board of engineers, they will have the same ethics. The ethics build
up when the engineers read, understood and follow the standard. The standard itself is an ethics of
the profession.

People who follow the standard procedure may tends to loss its innovative skills due to lack
of critical and creative thinking in day life. For an example, a semiconductor industry worker needed
to follow the company standard procedure every day and after times, the workers started to adopt
the concept of the standard procedure he use daily is logic. Its consciousness is implanted with the
procedure. This reduce the innovative thinking, he may think this is the only way to do the thing
right. Therefore, company needed to explain why the procedure is set like this and if the workers
think it is not suitable at the production, he may give suggestion to the management or engineers to
improve the procedure. This process helps the workers to always think about the works and train
their innovative mind.

Even through standardization brings lots of benefits, it will impedes people’s innovative
mind. A related concern is the idea that if you standardize crucial processes in your company, the
result will be a workplace that does not promote innovation and creativity. The essential fear here is
that standardization means an organizational culture that leeches away all individual thinking and
new ideas, replacing vibrant diversity with a monoculture mentality. Here it is important to not
conflate standardization with a lack of innovation. Again, standardization is the elimination of
alternatives which are inefficient and conducive to conflict. By eliminating inefficiency and needless
conflict in your organization, you can help everyone to free themselves from needless wastes of
their time and energy to focus on innovation in areas in which it really matters. The irony here is
that in fact, standardization is good for innovation. By standardizing processes, you will be
streamlining operations in a way that helps everyone to do more and be more effective team
members. And of course, if someone in the organization discovers a way to improve a standardized
process, the organization can investigate and possibly adopt it. There is no reason a standardized
process cannot be changed over time if circumstance, experience, and innovation indicate that it is
indeed time for a change.

Policies and procedures in standardization, inflexible and rigid organizational structures,

traditions, and a culture of playing by the rules, are keeping employees from participating, stifling
any innovative or creative processes. An oppressive environment has a tendency to force employees
to conform to accepted patterns, rules, and inherent limitations of the status quo. This hampers
creative thinking and new ideas. This make the workers not to giving their though to the upper
management or engineers to improve, if they do it, they may lost their job. Therefore the as an
employer, they should know that although some rules are necessary, many can suppress innovation
and ideas. Consider if some of the rules can be relaxed, changed, updated, or eliminated to make
allowances for the idea process to flourish.
 To make sure the standardization will not impedes innovation, the company should need to
implement a suggestion box at each department to allow employees to fill in suggestion paper with
ideas and suggestion about improving the process or standard or product. Then research and
development department will read the suggestion papers and give response to the employees. Even
through sometimes the idea is not useable, the company should still awarding and publishing the
idea on the notice board to tell the employees the reason of why the company doesn’t take his/her
suggestion. This can improve the relationship between the employee and employer, and improving
the employee knowledge about the process. “Learn from asking question”.

Standardization is efficiency in either production or service line. With standardization,

human can builds things small as tiny nano-tech robots to big as mega-stories skyscrapers.
Innovation may be impedes by the standardization, but with proper way of discussion and
brainstorming, innovation still can be carried out and leads the human to another big steps.