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Standard work is the documented, currently-best way to perform each task on the line — not a ceiling on how good work can be, but a floor under how bad it is allowed to be, and the fixed point against which every proposed improvement is measured. Without a standard there is no kaizen, because there is nothing to improve from.

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Where it lives

The factory’s standard work is the production-line document: seven stations, their outputs, and the principles that bind them — pull don’t push, stop the line, small batches, every unit inherits the base protocol. Station-by-station operational detail lives in the station pages; the standard-work document is the law those pages tour.

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The standard is germline

The standard work shapes every future unit, which makes it germline under Thesis 5 — and germline changes get the strictest control in the plant. Row 13 of the compilation table lands here:
  • Machine-readable manifest. The list of germline paths is not folklore; it lives in a single machine-readable manifest that both humans and gates consult.
  • Protected change path. Germline files change by PR only, with required review and branch protection.
  • Changelog required by lint. germline/check-changelog.py fails any change to a germline path that does not add a dated changelog entry in the same diff — reading the manifest at both ends of the range so a change cannot ungate itself, and failing closed when it cannot determine. The production line’s own history is entry-by-entry visible at the bottom of the document, as the design demanded.
  • Fixture evals on PR. Germline changes re-run evals against fixture units before merge, because a germline defect is congenital.

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How the standard changes

Anyone on the line — human or agent — proposes a change the same way: a PR against the standard, carrying its changelog entry, passing the gate. The main feeder is the retro: every unit’s retrospective ends with a mandatory section, what changed in the standard work, because a retro that changes nothing is a diary entry. Lessons that recur across runs graduate into the standard by the same germline path (Station 6’s graduation rule).

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Unfinished until checkable

In this factory a standard that is not machine-checkable is treated as unfinished. Rules as scripts reach roughly 100 percent compliance; rules as documentation, about 48 — so each standard is written with its compiled form in view: the prose states the law, the gate makes it physics. A standard that exists only as prose is a standard still in compilation.

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Self-audit