SWCTStandardized Work Combination Table

What is a Standardized Work Combination Table?

The Standardized Work Combination Table (SWCT) — also known as Form 2 of the three core standardized work documents — visualizes how manual work, machine (auto) time, walking, and waiting interact within a single process cycle. Many companies call it a standard work combination table or standard work combination sheet (SWCS); the format is the same. Each work element is plotted against a takt time timeline so you can see at a glance where the operator is idle, where auto time overlaps with manual work, and where the cycle exceeds takt.

Teams use the SWCT to balance work content across operators, identify waiting waste, and determine whether auto time can run concurrently with manual tasks. It is the bridge between the raw data captured on the Time Observation Sheet and the spatial layout documented on the Standardized Work Chart.

When to use this tool

Use the SWCT whenever you need to document a new standard, rebalance a line after a takt time change, or investigate why an operator cannot keep pace. It is especially valuable during kaizen events, new model launches, and any time the Process Capacity Sheet reveals a bottleneck that requires work redistribution. The Lean Enterprise Institute's lexicon entry on standardized work covers how the three forms fit together in more depth. Prefer a spreadsheet? The free standard work combination table template for Excel (download button above) carries the same form with a formula-driven timeline grid.

How to read a completed SWCT: a worked example

Suppose an operator tends a CNC lathe with a takt time of 60 seconds. The SWCT shows five work elements: pick up the raw part (4s manual), load and start the machine (8s manual), machine cycle (38s auto), walk to the finished-goods chute (3s walk), and deburr and place the previous part (12s manual). Drawn on the combination table, the 38-second auto bar runs in parallel with the walk and deburr elements — the operator is not standing at the machine watching it cut. Total operator time is 27 seconds against a 60-second takt.

That gap is the finding. Thirty-three seconds of waiting per cycle is invisible on a spreadsheet of cycle times, but on the SWCT it appears as empty space between the end of the operator's last element and the takt line. A team reading this chart would ask: can this operator run a second machine inside the same takt? Can work elements from a neighboring overloaded station move here? If instead the manual elements had summed past the takt line, the chart would show exactly which element pushes the cycle over — the starting point for improvement, not a reason to pad the standard.

SWCT vs. Yamazumi chart

The two charts answer different questions. The SWCT examines one operator's cycle in time sequence — how manual, auto, walking, and waiting interleave, and whether auto time is being used to mask or absorb manual work. A Yamazumi chart (operator balance chart) stacks the total work content of every operator on the line side by side against takt, making it the tool for line balancing decisions: which stations are overloaded, which have slack, and where elements should move.

In practice they work as a pair. The Yamazumi tells you that station 3 is over takt and station 5 is under; the SWCT for each station tells you which specific elementscan actually move, because it exposes the sequence and the machine-time constraints a stacked bar hides. If you are rebalancing a line, start with the Yamazumi; if you are designing or fixing one station's standard, start here.

Related tools

• Process Capacity Sheet — Form 1: calculate machine capacity and find bottlenecks
• Standardized Work Chart — Form 3: map the work area layout and operator walking path
• Time Observation Sheet — capture the raw cycle time data that feeds the SWCT
• Takt Time Calculator — calculate the takt time used as the SWCT baseline