Building And Using Effective Visual Management Boards

Leveraging simple communication concepts from everyday life for workplace applications can provide significant value in ever-leaner plant environments.

By Jane Alexander, Managing Editor with Rick Wheeler, Life Cycle Engineering

Visual management has been a normal part of our everyday lives for a long time. Consider your personal driving habits: How do you know it’s safe to proceed through an intersection? How fast can you travel along a specific stretch of highway? How much fuel remains in your tank (or battery) at any given time? We get these answers, respectively, from traffic signals (red, yellow and green), speed-limit signs and dashboard indicators.

Cars and trucks are a prime example of how we use various layers of information. At the highest level, vehicle dashboards tell us the speed, fuel level and the gear we’re in. On many new cars, however, several additional levels of information are available, such as tire pressure, percent of remaining oil life, average speed, fuel mileage and others. Do we need such information each time we drive? No, but it’s handy to have periodically.

Visual management boards are based on a similar concept. These simple displays of information can be invaluable to a facility. Used as key communication tools in increasingly lean workplace environments, effective visual management boards provide a wealth of important information at a glance.

There are several types of visual management boards, including those that convey information on continuous-improvement efforts, project status and point-of-use tools. This article highlights boards that support manufacturing operations.

Building an effective visual management board

When developing a visual management board for a manufacturing setting, simplicity should be paramount. Typically, the focus is to display vital measurements and other information so these details are:

• Consistent — All boards throughout an organization should be similar, with minimal variation only as processes require it.
• Easily understood by all — All levels of the organization should use this system to obtain a quick sense of the health of a process, line or cell.
• Visible from a distance of at least 40’ (headers only) — This allows for a quick understanding of the health of the process, line or cell without having to walk to the sign.
• Colorful — Use Green to indicate where a goal has been hit or exceeded; use Red for a miss. This “pass/fail” indicator avoids the use of Yellow.
• Metrics for a visual management board can include:
• People / Safety — Injuries and absenteeism
• Quality — Scrap, defects and rework
• Schedule — On track or not
• Cost — Usually productivity, but could be efficiency as well
• 5S — Making housekeeping measurable and updating daily conditions

What to communicate

Determining what should be displayed on a visual management board is a logical process. Think about an employee, guest, supplier or corporate visitor walking into your facility to his/her respective “work” area. What information does this person need to see? While the answer depends largely on your industry and what’s important at your facility, consider the following:

As we first walk into an operation, certain high-level data points should help us understand the values of the company and site, and how the facility performs against them. Most manufacturing businesses should focus on People, Quality, Schedule and Cost. Given the importance of these items, we would expect to see high-level indicators of the plant’s position on them. The information should not be too data-intense at this point. Usually, a simple Green/Red indicator is sufficient.

As we move deeper into the facility, the level of information should become more focused and relevant to the functions occurring in that area. Although high-level indicators are still appropriate, they would usually be refocused to a level that is applicable to the area. Take the manufacturing schedule: The visual management boards should tell us where a specific area stands against its goal for the month or campaign. We would then see the beginnings of additional data layers that reflect, for example, the sub-operations that run in the area and where they stand against their respective targets.

As we move to the functional-level work areas, we should see a deeper, even more focused level of information posted on visual management boards. This information will speak to the daily or weekly planned work for a function. It will also include information on tasks that have come up that were not planned. Such information becomes the focus of shift meetings. The area leader reviews the information with the area employees to ensure that everyone is aligned on what work is to be done. Again, there will be additional information that is relevant to an area, such as the status of training objectives and other issues. In some cases, it could be information about continuous-improvement projects in the area.

Gauging success

Like any tool, the most important aspect of a visual management board is how it’s ultimately used. The development and implementation of these boards can be deemed “successful” when production teams use them as vehicles to understand gaps in performance—and, in turn, address these gaps with actions to “right the ship” and achieve their targets.

Keep in mind that a visual management board must be as user-specific as possible. This means that the personnel responsible for the process, line or cell are the same individuals who actually maintain the board. This approach tends to build a sense of emotion behind the numbers: Think about having to use Red two or three days in a row when calling out an important production indicator. What emotions might this cause a supervisor and/or team to feel?

To create or improve your visual management processes—and ensure these efforts are successful—use value-stream mapping to understand where your bottlenecks are. Engage all employees in continuous-improvement efforts to relieve those bottlenecks. Develop focused key performance indicators (KPIs) that help measure the results. Finally, build, implement and maintain visual management boards to communicate and align your organization. MT

What’s the Best Visual Management Board Format?

Basic or high-tech, it’s the one that suits your site’s specific needs

Once you’ve determined the type of information to include on a visual management board, what type of board should you choose? There are many choices, from a basic manual tracking system to fully integrated electronic systems that extract data directly from plant control systems. 

Clearly, the more automated the system, the less time personnel will spend on the “administrivia” of maintaining it. Conversely, while automated boards may look nice, they don’t necessarily provide relevant information in a form that is easily understood by the intended audience. Therein lies the key to effective visual management: The audience is crucial. And so is the board’s user-friendliness.

As explained in the driving example at the start of the accompanying article, we don’t have to, nor do we want to, push a lot of buttons to learn how fast our vehicles are moving along a highway. The same goes for visual management efforts in our workplaces. We need to spend time understanding what information is needed and the frequency with which it is supplied for an individual, team, department or plant to effectively manage equipment and processes. Accordingly, the best format for a visual management board is the one that supports that overarching goal.

Rick Wheeler is a Principal Consultant with Life Cycle Engineering (LCE), based in Charleston, SC. With experience in the pharmaceutical, chemical and nuclear industries, he trains clients on best practices and coaches corporate and site leadership teams on organizational change management. Contact him at rwheeler@LCE.com.