Shadow boards for tools are a simple solution with enormous potential to save time, improve accountability, ensure health and safety is being complied with and promote tidiness and pride in the workplace. Essential to 5S Workplace Organisation and SMED, Clarity has produced shadow tool boards for a broad spectrum of applications. Clarity also can create bespoke solutions to ensure effective and visual methods of storing machine change parts to enable faster and more efficient changeovers.
Shadow boards are a simple solution with the enormous potential to save time, improve accountability, ensure health and safety standards are being complied with and promote tidiness and pride in the workplace. Tool shadow boards are essential to 5S Workplace Organisation and SMED.
We have a wide range of tool holders to cope with the many types of tools that are used on our shadow boards.
Clarity has assisted many manufacturers in improving their changeover time by creating innovative and bespoke solutions for storing machine change parts. Custom-made to the specific requirements of your machine tooling and incorporating colour coding and clear identification of parts, these have delivered significant cost-savings.
What are the benefits of Shadow Boards?
The 5S system is reliant on 5 components that are known for improving processes in the workplace. The 5 stages of 5s include Sort, Set in Order, Shine, Standardise and Sustain. A shadow tool board is a great way to feed into these, as it provides your workforce with a dedicated space for storing tools in an organised manner. We’ve outlined how a shadow board fits into each of these 5 stages below.
Sort – A tool shadow board helps your workforce organise their tools effectively, meaning you save time searching for missing tools, and can clearly identify which tools are not used or needed and dispose of these. Set in Order – This stage is specifically dedicated to ensuring that there is a place for everything, and that everything is in its place. A tooling shadow board does just that.
Shine – Shine refers to a clean and tidy workplace, which is what can easily be achieved with a shadow tool board. Using these boards ensures that everything is put away in its place, and your work station is tidy. Standardise – Shadow boards help you make a clean and tidy workplace a standard thing, not just a one off. It may be that you have a dedicated person to check the shadow tool board at the end of the day to ensure everything is returned to its rightful place.
Sustain – A shadow tool board is designed to create an efficient way of working, however this needs to be implemented indefinitely. To sustain this, you will need to carry out regular checks such as monitoring, reviewing and modifying to check that your shadow board is working efficiently and that your employees are following protocol.
Get in touch and speak with a Visual Management Specialist to answer any questions you may have on our products, consultancy or business.
Is your business achieving its full potential? Clarity offers a proven approach to help your business achieve its vision. Book now!
To explore more about Clarity Visual Management, get a copy of our latest introductory brochure to learn more about our service.