Visual Management Boards are found at the heart of any progressive Lean organisation. They are essentially a communication tool, giving up to date, vital information to those who need to know it.
Here at Clarity, visual management is our area of expertise and we work with countless businesses, large and small, to implement effective and engaging visual management boards to help you reach your goals, exceed your targets and make financial savings which would have otherwise been lost in waste.
Professionally executed visual management boards have the power to drive continuous improvement and embed Lean in the company’s culture by achieving excellent employee engagement; poorly done, they become visual wallpaper… they look attractive, but go largely unnoticed!
All our visual management boards are created bespoke which gives us great flexibility in manufacturing methods. We can advise whether a more traditional board or a printed magnetic overlay (sometimes known as a ‘skin’) is the best choice for your application.
It’s important that your business see’s problems as helpful to the organisation. Many companies see problems as something to be hidden away, that they’re a source of embarrassment, or that it will only lead to blame. If you’re reading this then you should be the one to take ownership of changing your businesses culture to see every problem as an opportunity for improvement. Businesses that are serious about continuous improvement must love their problems and see visual management for what it is, a way of easily indicating where they need help!
We cannot overstate the importance of making sure that all your visual management boards look the part. This is vital to ensuring your workplace looks professional so that you can foster a sense of ownership within the team. Fundamentally you want to create a workplace that the team can be proud of and high-quality, professional standards is a key part of this and shows your team that the company as a whole is committed to the Lean programme.
When you’re designing and developing your visual management programme it can be easy to throw everything at it, but we would recommend taking a less is more approach. Ensure that you’re only using your visual management boards to track measures that drive results. Decide on an acceptable timeframe to read the status of your key measures and constantly monitor and change your visual management to ensure that it is within that timeframe.
This board has been carefully designed for maximum employee engagement, inviting suggestions for improvement and giving a gentle reminder of what ‘good’ looks like by the photos of each area that are to be shown in the magnetic frames! You will also notice that the teams are expected to colour in the daily boxes within the ‘5S’ to show whether they had a good day or a bad one. This simple technique allows the team to monitor trends within their workplace and develop countermeasures and actions based on hitting their target or missing it. It also offers transparent visibility for anyone in the workplace as to the current status of the team’s 5S initiative.
Visual management is an essential tool within your visual management programme to communicate with your workforce about the progress you’re making to reduce waste. This simple information board summaries the progress of the businesses key continuous improvement projects. Dynamically changing visuals help keep the team engaged as they can see the progress being made daily, weekly and monthly and can be an active part in the journey.
We used a large magnetic frame for this Health and Safety Board to ensure the information can be easily updated.
An example of a board designed to be always positioned where it has the most impact … in this case where the maintenance is taking place. It uses a combination of colour, T-card systems and document holders to ensure that all the information needed for timely completion of the work is on hand.
This eye-catching board provides a quick summary of all aspects of performance, whilst the section below ensures it is on schedule. This is an excellent example of well positioned visual management – part of the action, not hidden away in a corner!
A problem-solving board designed to guide and promote a problem-solving mindset in view of winning high-quality improvement suggestions from the ‘coalface’
Our own Problem Solving Board which guides users through the problem-solving process.
This Performance Board shows an eye catching summary by means of the rev counters at the top of each section, before developing more detailed information below.
This Health and Safety board is particularly ideal for shift work, avoiding the situation where an incident is reported several times but never resolved! Areas, where there is a problem, are flagged up on the site map with a numbered magnet, and a corresponding magnet and the necessary corrective action are recorded in the gridded part of the board.
Staff board showing the management’s commitment to implement improvement suggested by the team.
Get in touch and speak with a Visual Management Specialist to answer any questions you may have on our products, consultancy or business.
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Jackson Way, Melton, HU14 3HJ
01482 296451
info@clarityvm.com
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