March 2010
Do Your People Know The Score?
by Ken Rolfes, KDR Associates for the I-Channel
A visual information system gives your employees the tools to manage their own work
The NCAA March madness is in full swing. Some teams have celebrated their tournament entrance and some exciting ‘upsets’ have already occurred. For the avid college basket ball fan the play is exciting to watch and follow the progress to the final four. However, can you imagine how interested you would be if the scores were not posted? A ref calls a foul and free throws made, but you don’t know the number of fouls the player has or how much time is left on the shot clock. There have been baskets made, but you don’t know who is winning or by how much. By now you have forgotten which half it is. How long do you think you would stay with the game?
The situation above may not be so different in your company. Take a walk through your workplace. Look at the work areas. You will find visual cues in every work area consisting of lighting, floor covering, desks, benches, shelves, cabinets, tools and equipment, bulletin boards hung with posted communications from management to employees including work rules, government mandated flyers and sometimes quality, safety and company or unit performance. The key questions are: In ten seconds, can you determine the status of the work being done? Can you differentiate what is normal from abnormal? Can you tell if you are on plan? Can the workers?
Use the power of visual tools
Those striving to achieve a high performance company are recognizing the need to rise above the mundane bulletin boards and supervisor expediting routines and are utilizing visual management and control systems. Visual Management is a system that uses simple but powerful visual tools for the company’s workforce to communicate and control work processes and goes far beyond having a clean and well-organized facility.
The tools in a Visual Management system are designed to share real-time information about the status of the company and the work being done. Visual management encompasses a range of tools such as process charts, indicators, and visual instructions that provide status, trends and triggers for action. The objective is real-time information and feedback regarding the status of the cell, process and plant through a company-wide communication system that allows all employees to understand how they affect the company's overall performance.
Visual controls are mechanisms designed to allow people to manage processes by following standards and making deviations from standards visible to everyone so corrective action can be taken in real-time. They make it easier to do work the right way rather than the wrong way by answering questions; identifying priorities, materials and locations; initiating or limiting actions; providing safety warnings and precaution information. Visual controls help employees avoid wasting time by giving them the information they need where and when they need it. By providing your employees with the clear information they require to manage their own performance, visual controls can produce extraordinary gains in productivity, quality and profitability.
We experience visual controls each time we pull our cars out of the garage. Streets are marked with lines and directional signs. Intersections are indicated by lights and signs. Additionally, many highways today have status signage informing drivers of traffic conditions.
Consider for a moment how life on the highway would be if those controls were managed by “traffic managers.” Instead of lights, signs and painted lines, traffic managers were used to direct drivers’ actions. It doesn’t take much imagination to realize that traffic would be at a standstill, and the cost of the huge labor force to accomplish this would bankrupt most communities. Yet in our companies’ visual controls are few and inconsistent at best.
High performance businesses are focused on managing processes in real-time at the place of work (“gemba”). The areas of emphasis with visual controls have a direct connection with company strategy, and are integrated into management standard work. Important business process information is recorded and displayed in simple visual terms throughout the company for all to see and react to as it happens. Typically this information includes status to plans, process metrics, work instructions, and general site and company information.
Over the years, I have found there are three characteristics of visual management systems that make them work effectively and build associate partnerships in the success of the company.
- The work team must believe the objective of the visuals is to make them successful and that goals are obtainable within the resources and capabilities of the team.
- The purpose of the information and feedback must be clear and goals defined with a definitive level of accuracy and relevance to the work process.
- The objectives displayed must be relevant to the whole organization’s priorities.
The essence of visual management is being able to determine at a glance whether a situation is normal or abnormal. This allows collaborative corrective action to be taken quickly to fix the abnormal situation or improve the process. Attempting to implement visual communications where the three conditions above are not present will most likely result in failure.
Consider the following points as you strive to improve your business performance:
Management focus: Establish model examples of each type of visual tool, and require basic visual management tools in each cell (standard WIP locations, production control boards, cell indicator tracking, and safety-related items).
Identity: The distinctive aspect of visual communication is that it is intended for a wide variety of disciplines in the organization responsible for making a work process successful, not just for one individual. The identity of the information and the roles of each group or team, therefore, needs to be defined in order for the right information to be displayed, be relevant, understood and serve the group.
Ownership: The people, who work in, manage and support the workplace and cells must take ownership in making it a visually managed workplace. The front line supervisor plays a key role here.
Meetings: Use visual management to eliminate 80 percent of meeting time wasted by simply providing status updates. Production control boards, Kanbans, team maintained attendance and standard work used for communication allows teams to manage their own areas. The emphasis of meetings then can become more forward looking.
Seeing at a glance: Managers, supervisors and support people should get into the habit of walking and observing the workplace. Are they standing still long enough to notice what’s abnormal and what’s normal? Is action initiated when deviations occur?
Visual management is the Lean System sensing mechanism. It provides transparency of operational reality and clarity of deviations against standards of performance. Information is delivered to inform, alert, or motivate office and production teams. Most have heard the cliché, “What gets measured gets managed.” In a lean environment, “What gets measured visually gets managed in real-time.”
You can e-mail Ken Rolfes at kenremailmodernwoodworking@yahoo.com.
Mr. Rolfes is President KDR Associates, Inc. a KDR Advisors Company. He works with customers to develop and implement comprehensive strategies for increasing the effectiveness of Operations, Product Development and Revenue generation to achieve higher growth, profitability, productivity, increased morale, and customer satisfaction.
Ken has more than 35 years experience in general management, new product development, supply chain and cost management, turnarounds, acquisitions and divestitures. His customers include organizations in the, medical device, woodworking, high tech, and retail services industries. Mr. Rolfes received his BS in Industrial Engineering from the University of Dayton (OH), and MBA in Finance from Drexel University (PA). He is currently serves as director for Association for Manufacturing Excellence (AME).