--- name: standard-work-audit description: "Whether a work instruction is actually being followed weeks after it was written — the sustainment audit's shape, applied to standard work instead of a kaizen event. Use when: A work instruction has been in place long enough to check whether it's actually still followed, not just written. You want to catch instruction drift — the real practice diverging from the documented one — before it becomes the norm. You want to close a gap the instruction itself flagged when it was first built (a missing key point, an unclear step). Not for: The instruction was just written — give it real time to settle before auditing it." --- # Standard work audit Whether a work instruction is actually being followed weeks after it was written — the sustainment audit's shape, applied to standard work instead of a kaizen event. Family: Standard work · Format: .xlsx · Domain: core ## What it is A work instruction written once and never checked again tends to drift from what people actually do. This audit is the sustainment audit's exact shape, applied to a work instruction: restate what it was supposed to ensure, get a checklist of specific practices to verify, and see honestly which are still holding weeks or months later. ## When to use it Use it when: - A work instruction has been in place long enough to check whether it's actually still followed, not just written. - You want to catch instruction drift — the real practice diverging from the documented one — before it becomes the norm. - You want to close a gap the instruction itself flagged when it was first built (a missing key point, an unclear step). Not when: - The instruction was just written — give it real time to settle before auditing it. ## How to fill it in - **originalObjective** — What was the work instruction supposed to ensure? - **checks** — Drafted from what the instruction was supposed to change — verify what's actually still holding. - **narrative** — Drafted from the checklist actually built. ## What good looks like The example below audits the tier-3 work instruction for triaging renewal-risk tickets, fifty-one days after it was written — including whether the step it originally flagged with no key point still has that gap. Full worked example, on-screen and as a downloadable .xlsx: https://www.katafacts.com/katas/standard-work-audit ## Common mistakes - **Auditing an instruction that was never actually rolled out.** — A sustainment audit checks whether real practice has drifted from a real standard — there's nothing to check if the standard was never actually used. - **Marking a practice as holding without actually verifying it on the floor.** — The audit only has value if it reflects reality, not a hopeful assumption. ## What it connects to Upstream: - **Work instruction** (`work-instruction`) — The instruction's own steps and key points are exactly what this audit checks against reality. ## Where AI helps Judgement — stays with you: - Deciding how much time to give an instruction before auditing it - Deciding what to do about a practice that's flagged at risk Analysis — AI helps: - Drafting specific, verifiable checks from a description of what the instruction was supposed to ensure - Drafting the narrative from the checklist actually built Drudgery — automated: - Tallying how many practices are still holding - Identifying which practices are at risk - Exporting to xlsx in the house format --- Standard work audit is licensed [CC BY 4.0](https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/). Attribution: Katafacts (katafacts.com). ## Using this skill Apply this method as part of whatever broader task, instructions, or deliverable you're already working on -- it's a method to use, not a standalone conversation to start. There is no generation tool for this catalogue yet, so draft the artifact's actual content yourself, following the fields above, the same way a person filling this out by hand would. The canonical guide page and a downloadable worked example (.xlsx) are at https://www.katafacts.com/katas/standard-work-audit.