Lean tool visual control

They are a simple and easy way for employees to be able to tell if a certain task has been completed or not by simply glancing at the indicating card.

Quality Standards. Having quality standards for products helps to give your operators a visual control to base their decisions off when determining quality. These standards should be in reach of operators for easy reference.

Visual Controls when applied to quality help to reduce defects and eliminate quality control inspection from your process. There are a variety of visual controls you can introduce into your organisation to support your visual management goals. Color Coding The easiest form of visual controls to apply is color coding, where we use colors to communicate status.

Standard Work Often there are always several ways to do a task but only one of these ways is the most efficient use of resources based on current knowledge. In the Toyota Production System there are four aspects to standardisation: Content — this is agreeing with the steps that are involved in the task.

Sometimes there is debate as to whether particular steps are necessary. To develop standardised work the team must agree on what the necessary steps are. Sequence — the steps must be completed in the same sequence every time. This is essential to ensure a consistent outcome Timing — there should be a standard time that it takes for a trained person of average competency to do the task. Knowing this standard time enables us to balance that task with other tasks to create level production.

Clear, concise communication is key for production and distribution areas. Work areas are often noisy, not allowing for verbal communications. This can be distracting to employee distractions, which can be hazardous.

The improvement results can be measured over the long haul and communicated to the entire organization, and all improvement work is captured, adding to the repository of tribal knowledge.

Andon in manufacturing refers to a status-display visualization. The origin of the term Andon is the Japanese word for a traditional paper lantern. An Andon is one of the most common forms of visual management that is in used in Lean. It is a precious tool as it enables the operation to run smoothly without any bottlenecks.

Andon lights are a signal much like traffic lights with three colors on top of each level of the production assembly line. Whenever a worker detects a problem in the production line or finds themself unable to keep pace with the line, they can stop the operation by pulling a cord called 'andon' cord, which sets off an alarm system and illuminates the color-coded andon electric light board.

Blue, green, or black is used for marketing materials and components, including raw materials, work-in-progress, and finished goods. Orange is often used for materials or products that have been held for inspection, and red is used to mark defects, scrap, rework, and red tag areas.

Value stream mapping is another helpful visual management technique in which all of the activities and raw goods that bring value to the customer are diagramed in a continuous flow. This technique is beneficial for identifying processes that don't add value and targeting them for elimination. Whether you use one or all of these techniques, adding the element of visual management, especially when assisted by technology, will help you accelerate the pace of improvement, reduce irregularities, and keep everyone engaged.

Topics: Lean , Software , Visual Management. KaiNexus empowers leading organizations in every industry to start, spread and sustain their improvement cultures. Wherever you are in your improvement journey, KaiNexus will help you take it to the next level with unprecedented visibility, communication, and standardization.

KaiNexus Blog. This is essential to reap all the benefits of a visual system and to guarantee its sustainability.

Visual boards have to give the team the information they need to complete their work as expected. It is critical that the boards on the gemba speak the same language as the front-line operators: rather than complex measures with which middle or top managers are normally familiar with like service rates or OEE for the former, and profits and losses for the latter , they should use simple indicators people understand — like the number of parts produced or orders processed.

This is particularly important at the beginning, when people are still learning how to work with visuals. Like other lean tools, they should be created by hand and installed by the operators themselves, at the gemba.

This way, we involve people and make them responsible for keeping the boards updated. Having the operator create and update the graphics with a simple marker makes them much more aware of the meaning of the results they are achieving. It also gives people the opportunity to confirm the accuracy of the data they gather by looking at the situation first hand: for example, if an operator writes down a very low level of scrap for a day of work but the red bin is full of faulty parts, he will be able to immediately question the information he has put on the graphic.

They have to be located close to the process, in a safe place. They have to be used as the tools they are, not as wallpaper to make the production are look nicer or more sophisticated. The boards are supposed to encourage conversations at all levels, starting with those within the team to truly evaluate the performance of the process they are running and compare it with their expectations. Five or six KPIs are ideal.

Of those, I think three are particularly important: Understand the concept. Before designing your visual system and starting to visualize information, we have to be clear on the context in which that need to communicate exists.

We have to clearly define the What what do we want to communicate o want people to know? Just for the team? For the manager?