What defines visual management? Why is visual management so important? And in our business or any business?
The definition of visual management is the visual indicator which reflects to the viewer the status of something so you can mitigate risk. In our world of microelectronics manufacturing, this can indicate a variety of information in production output; replenish stock, order entry, or something like a machine is down (an error). We tend to inflate these concepts and make them harder than what is actually required, however the overall concept is important for everyone from our customer to the tech on the plant floor.
First, we should look at everyday simple versions of World Class Visual Management that you might not have thought about. I will give you three examples from our everyday life of world class management.
- Visual Management is all around us especially at sporting events.When you glance at the scoreboard at a baseball game for example you quickly view the score by inning, who is at the plate, balls, strikes, and number of outs. At a quick glance, you clearly know how the game is going. Look at the picture and it will show you batting average, lineup card, record, last at bat results, and the position he plays.
- The second example is the fuel gauge in your car. Maybe you never thought this to be visual management but this is one of the most critical gauges glanced at in your car daily if you drive many miles. However, let’s just consider the whole dashboard as visual management. The dashboard gives you direct feedback on speed, engine temperature, fuel level, seat belts, cruise control on, headlights on, average speed, distance to empty, and miles per gallon calculations. What more could you need? How about tire pressure, outside temperature, lane drift, blind spot monitor indication, doors open and GPS location to name a few features in newer automobiles.
- The third example is the fast food drive through window display. Remember many years ago when you placed an order and couldn’t understand the person taking your order and when you pulled around you hoped the order was correct? Well visual management at fast food restaurants gets the most improved award. First, you have the menu selection which can be ordered by number with pictures for convenience which takes the guess work away. When you speak, your order begins to show on a display with quantity, description of item and price, which is instant feedback. When you have placed your order you can feel relatively assured they got it correct. Then when you pull around to the pick-up window the price is again displayed to confirm and a clock is started to measure how long it takes to fill the order.
All of these examples are electronic displays however, for manufacturing use the something simple like a dry erase board. As our teams continue to train in Lean Manufacturing Processes, such as Project/Process Management, and Kaizen, visual management allows everyone to get on the same page, understand process/s and get the message. Visual management is cost effective, easy to update, and can be altered with different colors for displaying urgency or organization.
I encourage your team to start visual management, it is simple!
