Routines - Best Practices

Get the most from Routines with these tips on how to create and deploy Routines, while driving Findings to completion.


This article is organized in five sections to align with the five major workflow steps of Routines.

Create and Manage Routines
Build a Digital Checklist
Execute Routines and Log Findings
Address Findings
Follow up on Routines
Insights & Reports

Create and Manage Routines

Who should be a Routine Manager? Individuals who are accountable for the execution of the specific routines. There may be many different managers across the teams and areas of an organization. We suggest that these Routine Managers have training and guidelines to help maintain consistency across the routines.

Building an effective Routine. Include all relevant information for the assignees (auditors). Information in the Description should include a specific goal, the steps, and any special instructions on how to run the routine. Assume that the assignee will have to rely purely on this information. Add information about KPI/Metrics that define whether the Routine is completed and if the results are positive or negative.

Publishing your Routine. Routines can be held as unpublished until you are ready. Make sure you have all the information ready before publish your routine. Train the assignees and be available for follow-up questions. Especially the first few times the Routine is executed.

Who should be a Routine Assignee? Any that is responsible or need to “audit” a process, product, and achieving certain metrics. Assignees are defined by the Routine Manager.

Building a Digital Checklist

Every step has a purpose. Keeping your checklist as short as possible will increase the engagement and attention paid to each individual step. Make sure that every step accomplishes a specific goal. Explore if some steps maybe able to be combined and be critical about which steps a 'must-do' as apposed to 'nice-to-have'. Indicating the most critical steps is also helpful

Be specific and concise. Take the time to articulate exactly what you want the user to do, observe, or answer. Assume that they will not be able to ask anyone for clarification, so the steps need to be completely self-sufficient. Consider your audience and the context in which they will be following your checklist.

Provide the best option for the feedback. There are several options for how the user will be able to provide feedback. The best option is the one that is easiest for the user, and will give you the information your need. It is important to balance these two needs as one should not be sacrificed for the other to have an effective checklist.

Use picture when appropriate. A picture is worth a thousand words. Use pictures and add annotations to pictures to help users understand the action for them to take, the behavior to observe, or the data to capture.

Execute Routines and Log Findings

Executing a Routine. Make sure the Routine has been clearly communicated, and basic training provided to the Routine Assignees. This should also include how to capture observations, anomalies and ideas as Findings and process them. Also the Routine Assignee needs to define the Rev type (QA or PDCA) that the Assignee will address.

Logging your Findings. Be specific, complete, and clear when providing the information for a finding - title, picture, due date, description. Provide some examples to the team.

Assigning your Findings. There are two ways to Assign Findings: (1)assign the Finding to anyone in the operation, OR, (2)assign the Finding to a specific Team. When assigning to a Team the people are limited to the individuals on the Team. When selecting the individual, look for those responsible for that process, work in that area, or have the skills to help.

Address Findings

Driving Findings to Resolution. Make sure the Finding Assignee(s) is aware of the issue to address and the due date clear. Keep in mind that the Due Date may be adjusted by the assignee.

Completing a Quick Action. The Quick Action should be used for fixes to restore situation vbac to their proper standard with a simple ‘before’ and ‘after’ workflow.

Completing an Improvement Idea (PDCA). The Improvement Idea should be selected when a new standard is being proposed. There may be different ways to address the situation and an experiment should be run to establish the best option. Improvement often impact the reduction of reduce waste, costs, time, downtime, or quality issues.

Follow up on Routines

Learning to improve Routines. As Routines are executed, look for trends that may help you improve the design of the routine. Share these learning with other Routine Managers for future routines. These improvement could be better ways to explain the routine goal and steps, train assignees, track the progress and address findings.

What to do with incomplete Routines and Findings. We recommend you track the completion rate of Routines and Findings closely. This is easy to do with the Routine Insights and will help you avoid situations where you have abandoned Routines and Findings. You can use Rever Web to see Insights, download reports, or Mobile to have the overview on the completion rate per routine.

Insights & Reports

What to look for. We recommend the Routine Manager and Routine Assignee track the progress of their routines, and associated Findings, on an ongoing basis. Pay special attention to Routines that were executed two or more weeks ago, to catch any laggards. Use this information to report on performance and to follow-up with individuals.

Define your KPIs. The KPIs you care about will depend on your business. Here are some suggestions specific to Routines: average time to execute/close a routine, average time to address the findings, average number of findings per routine, number of active routines, number of routines that are late, number of open Findings, number of open Findings past their due date.

Updated on: 02/05/2024