Today I am pleased to bring you an article from Mike Pedro, who blogs at Magnatag. Mike's shares 3 key ways to make the most of your Lean visuals from personal experience. A visual workplace supports employee engagement and continuous improvement.
Implementing
lean visuals into your organization is one of the best things you can do to
improve and motivate your team’s performance. Visuals keep everyone on your team informed
and thereby involved with daily operations. Gwendolyn Galsworth, an expert in lean
visualization, says that the visual workplace is more than just surrounding
ourselves with posters and signs, its about making the language of lean
production visual. In her article, “The value
of vision: the language of lean production is self-ordering and self-improving”,
Galsworth elaborates upon this idea further, stating:
“A
visual workplace is a self-ordering, self-explaining, self-regulating, and
self-improving work environment where what is supposed to happen happens on
time, every time, because of visual devices… There is one simple reason why a
visual workplace is needed: People have too many questions”.
So
you may be asking yourself, “If the purpose of utilizing lean visuals is to
inform and motivate my employees, how can I ensure its working?” In an attempt
to answer this question, we’ll cover some tried-and-true methods that can help
you make the most of your lean visual system.
Keep visuals as close
to their point of use as possible
Lean
visuals are designed to be precise, coherent, and motivating. Yet if we fail to
implement these indicators properly, their value quickly diminishes. Lean
visuals should always be placed in an area that makes sense to your employees;
if you plan to implement a safety display board within your production
facility, you should display it in an area that sees a lot of traffic
throughout the day. Employees will now engage with the board, thus creating a
collaborative effort to keep your workplace safe. I’ve seen far too many safety
managers simply tuck a safety display board within their own office—that simply
does not work. Sure, it may be a nice visual indicator to have at your
convenience, but it fails to be an active tool for engagement with your staff.
Ensure that your entire
workforce is on board
If
there was ever a surefire way to ensure the success of a lean manufacturing
movement, this would have to be it. Leading a successful charge in lean
production starts with employee engagement—you have to be able to establish a
connection between management and employees—without that, you’re destined for
failure. Leadership is truly fundamental when implementing a lean program. Perhaps
the best way to establish this connection is by hosting a company meeting,
laying out the foundation of your lean process, and allowing employees to
express their questions and concerns. In turn, you may find dialogue open up in
regards to the types of programs you are implementing, providing you with a
more profound understanding of what needs to be done to guarantee the success
of your lean process.
Set up a strong list of
goals
Having
lean visuals in your production facility is great, but you must have an idea of
what purpose they will serve. The ultimate goal of implementing a lean program
within your production facility is to improve upon company costs and manufacturing
efficiency. Setting up goals for your
team not only provides you with an idea of how your lean program is preforming,
but also serves as a motivating factor for every member of your team. Here’s a
tip on setting up goals for lean production; your goals should always be
believable, measurable, challenging, and set within a deadline.
The
key to making the most out of you lean visuals isn’t having the best looking
image or even having the highest-rated display board at your disposal—it’s all about
preparedness. If you are not ready to implement a lean system in your factory,
there is a strong likelihood that the processes wont succeed. Implementing a
lean way of thinking into your production facility should be treated with
extreme caution. If done poorly, a failed attempt at creating a lean
environment could prove to be demoralizing step backwards for your company. So
I urge you to precede with caution my friend; the journey into lean is one that
is often traveled, but difficult to master.
About the Author: Mike Pedro joined the Magnatag Visible Systems team right
after graduating from St. John Fisher College. He’s an expert when it comes to
the ins and outs of scheduling, communication, productivity and lean visuals.
He is also editor of Magnatag Insight (www.magnatag.com/blog).
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