Visual Management
From GTwM
Visual management is a term coined to describe how data and information is conveyed in a Lean Production environment.
Waste related to information comes in many forms;
- the maintenance and transmission of data that delivers no value, or no longer delivers value to a particular recipient
- inefficient methods of conveying information (unproductive meetings etc)
- the failure to communicate important data in a consumable and timely way leading to poor alignment
Visual methods of conveying information aim to ensure the right information is accessible to those who need it. The aim is to ensure the current status of all processes is immediately apparent to those involved with them.
Recently this technique has become more widely adopted in the Service Sector.
The Visual Workplace
The visual workplace can be seen as being made up of two major elements;
- Visual Order (see 5S)
- Visual Information Sharing (Obeya / War Room / Panoramic Visualisation)
Visual Devices are used as part of Visual Systems and are classified in Lean into four levels depending on the both extent to which the message is likely to be obeyed and the outcome of any failure to do so.
In rising order of severity these four classes are visual;
- indicators (street signs etc)
- signals (traffic lights)
- controls (lines designating parking bays in car parks - as cars form physical barriers based on line patterns)
- guarantees (drivers failure to use seatbelt disables engine if attempting to start car)
The power of VM: A Dutch Story
Donella Meadows in "Thinking in Systems" writes about the power of VM in a Dutch suburb in the early 1970′s.
One of Amsterdam’s suburbs is built in a remarkably uniform way: all houses are built using the same architecture and design, built using the same materials, similarly sized, similarly priced and similarly occupied by similar middle class families.
During the early 1970′s oil crisis, the Dutch government urged its citizens to reduce their electricity consumption. The Dutch, being Dutch, complied and the overall electricity consumption was reduced. However, in this specific suburb there was a strange trend: some of the houses showed a dramatic decrease in the electricity consumption of about a third of the consumption rate, while others showed a minor decrease in consumption.
What could be the source of such a dramatic gap in reduction of electricity consumption between such similar houses, similarly occupied?
An attempt to answer this question produced a surprising answer: for some unknown reason, some of the suburb’s houses had their electric meters installed at the entrance, while in others the electric meters were installed at the basement.
The electric meters were of the type that uses a rotating disk to indicate the electricity consumption level: the higher the disk’s rotation speed, the more electricity is consumed.
A short examination revealed that there is correlation between the location of the electric meter, and the dramatic reduction in electricity consumption.
It is quite easy to understand why: when the electric meter is located at the entrance to the house, a very prominent and visible location, the residents can often see the fast rotating disk, indicating a high level of electricity consumption. As a result, in these houses the electricity consumption decreased by about 30%. On the other hand, in the houses where the electric meter is locate in the seldom visited basement, the occupants of the house were a lot less aware of the level of their electricity consumption, and as a result – in these houses the reduction in electricity consumption was negligible.
