Visual management imagination

Visual management - job board

 You have heard it before, whether it was pertaining to visual management or any other aspect of you life, humans are visual creatures and our ability to comprehend large amounts of data at one time best comes in the form of a picture. They are really much more than a thousand words.

Visual management comes in a lot of forms. Many different kinds of tables, charts and graphs. They all have the same thing in common, they are designed to make use of our eyes and a conceptual brain to analyze images and distinguish colors.

The best visual management tools are large for everyone to see and should be grouped in terms of related features with the use of colors. Just about any data that needs to be relayed easily makes itself understandable through the use of charts and graphs. Types and styles of posted information are only governed by your imagination and the data you need to represent. You should challenge yourself to think outside the box and invent posting mechanisms that are unique to your organization, departmental needs and entices the observers.

Faced with the problem of to many NCR’s, I needed a sign that would accurately display needed metrics and unique enough to catch the attention of operators and keep them involved in the improvement of my metrics.

Everyone has walked into a manufacturing plant and noticed the sign that has the blank to fill in the days since the last lost time accident. It’s a great sign. People get involved in a increasing number and like to watch it grow day by day. That’s what I needed and the light bulb went off. I had a sign printed at a local sign shop that read, (blank) days since last NCR. The sign was large and I posted it high for everyone to see. It seemed like no big deal until the number got to double digits and then people began to take notice and wonder if this was the cause for the reduction in errors. After all, 10 days was an improvement, I’m embarrassed to say.

The number climbed and climbed. Speculation began as to whether it would reach 100 days. Unfortunately, at day 79 an error was generated and the climb came to a halt. Seventy-nine was the talk of the shop and the feeling around was that of being proud even though we generated an NCR that day, moral remained high. It was a terrible feeling the following morning when the new number (1) was placed in the blank.

The moral of the story is to use your imagination to pull in employees to act as advocates for the cause and you will see that this feeling is catchy and it spreads. Use your imagination and break free from the standard pre-printed signs and boards. The effort is well worth the rewards.