I’m adamantly convinced that being able to assign work correctly and effectively will have an instant significant and beneficial impact on the performance of an organization. When the assignment isn’t clear, too many things can go wrong. If you’ve ever run into a mistake because someone “didn’t read the paperwork”, you’ve seen the impact of work being assigned incorrectly.
Non-standard requirements from customers make things complicated. Whether your firm makes large runs or small ones, requests from customers for a non-standard product are often the source of mistakes. It is too easy to get “into the habit” because most orders are the same. That makes it easy to assume that every order has the same requirements.
Good practice is to review with your workers any element of the job that is non-standard, because it is much more inexpensive to have it clear from the start. When you speak about the non-standard stuff, it’s more likely to be remembered and done correctly.
Equally important, you want your team member to summarize the instructions to ensure they fully understand. If they can say it back to you, that means it has registered.
So try this: For the next three days whenever you assign work to someone, make sure that you bring to their attention any non-standard requirements such as packaging, different fittings, different tolerances, colours, and so on. Then have the person summarize what you’ve told them and monitor the number of mistakes that happen. You’ll see that the errors will decrease, saving you the aggravation and the company money. Continue this practice with your crew and this will ensure work for tomorrow and many more years to come.
Rod (not his real name) ran the paint shop in a plant making big machinery. As part of one of our training modules, he had been challenged to make an improvement in his area and so he decided to tackle the problem of not enough carts. 
Sometimes unexpected things happen and it may not be what you wanted or planned.
“One of the oddest things in our culture is that we seem to be tolerant of all sorts of behaviour, yet are deeply unforgiving.”
One of the ideas that we keep emphasizing in our programs is that when you assign work, you must have a conversation about time. There are two parts to the conversation. One is the question, “how long do you think this will take?” The second is a discussion about priorities: what is the impact on other work if this work is inserted.
Lean manufacturing is a term that has been given to a set of tools and practices that focus on reducing waste in any process. The best known organization used as an example is Toyota, but interestingly, they don’t think of it as “lean manufacturing.” To them it is just the Toyota Production System. And for them, they are very clear that it is a set of solutions that works for them, but that it cannot simply be copied. Each company needs to make it their own.