Back in 2014, I wrote an article for The Lean Post:

“Standardization is a Countermeasure, Never the Goal”
I’m a big fan of Taiichi Ohno’s advice to “start from need.” I cringe when I hear people say that we should standardize the way work is done “because Lean says so.” There’s no substitute for judgment in the grey areas related to standardized work.

What should we standardize? For what purpose? How standardized should the work be?

Baseball is struggling with questions like this… how standardized should the balls be… and for what purpose?