A pertinent question
As a continuous improvement and change management coach, I have often faced a question from the skeptical or cautious beginners, "Why isn't there a second Toyota if the principles are so effective?" Of course, one must treat this question figuratively for its spirit. It is perhaps possible to quote a handful of names to academically respond to this question with an intention to refute. But that's not the point. The underlying sentiment is that, in operational excellence, there is much ado about excellence, yet not much focus on how far it is from now. Is that tantamount to denial of the existing state of business - which is often perceived as mediocrity by some?
It is a very pertinent question. I myself have seen several businesses painting a long-term vision to inspire the staff not realizing that it is far, too remote, unfamiliar and a lofty goal that actually induces skepticism in the minds of many participants rather than any inspiration. "This is not a plan for now, but it is our 3-to-5-year vision" is a typical statement that often draws silence from the staff on the ground in management addresses and a complete disbelief, sometimes even sarcasm, subsequently behind manager's back. It's obvious. As goes Raymond Loewy's MAYA principle, the staff on the ground need something "Most Advanced, Yet Acceptable" as a new programme for them to genuinely believe and work on.
For this to happen - for the staff to buy into it - operational excellence programmes need to paint not only a picture of the 3-5 year long vision but also just "the next steps to achieve XYZ soon". That is the role of an effective visual system and the information system that supports it in the background.
Here are some typical imperatives for making visual systems effective when the current state is far from the long-term "excellent" vision.
Imperative 1: It's not about aesthetics, it's about the business
As Dr Jeffrey Liker says in his famous book "The Toyota Way":
"Visual control of a well-planned lean system is different from making a mass-production operation neat and shiny."
Like many businesses make a mistake of starting their continuous improvement or operational excellence journey with 5S and getting fixated on it for too long and too much, many also make a mistake of constructing beautiful sign-written visual boards looking wonderful to the visitors but not necessarily "meaningful" to the employees using them. The latter requirement is obviously a lot more important than the former.
This is not only applicable to visual display boards. Similar mistakes are committed while painting the walkways, displaying large signboards, or actually spending substantial amounts of money on painting the walls and refurbishing the furniture, railings, and such other appurtenances of a work environment instead of following an iterative lifecycle of cautiously employing a "meaningful-for-now" visual mechanism and then gradually improving it to suit the business activities.
One would ask, "Does this mean that if the business activity is always changing, the visual system also needs to be continually improvised to suit?" The answer would be a resounding, "Yes."
Imperative 2: A good visual system needs to be flexible to meet the need of the hour
It is quite normal that by every new day or week any business overcomes the old problems, utilizes old opportunities to translate them into a stable improved situation and find new ones. An effective visual system needs to be improved constantly to live with these changes.
A quality problem of yesterday may not need a limelight anymore and instead the capacity problem may need some attention today. As the season has changed from lean to peak this month, absenteeism or productivity may be the order of the day as against the timeliness of supplies that was the key issue last month.
On the one hand the visual system must not be overly dense and crowded to lose the audience, and on the other, it needs to be fresh and relevant all the time.
Imperative 3: Actions and results are the heart of the matter
Unless there are actions - planned, implemented, reviewed, improvised, reimplemented if necessary, and closed - with confirmation of success - no improvement system is serving its purpose. This is true not only for the visual boards with information, but also for signage, systems like Kanban, load levelling Heijunka boards, Andon lights or any other such system.
In other words, if the signs exist but are not being followed, disciplines such as high visibility vests are not embraced, Kanban cards are not used, and materials move with no connection to the information on Kanban cards - the visual systems are essentially futile. They are not only ineffective, but also a waste of resources and, furthermore, can even mislead people and cause serious errors.
It is therefore vital that the visual systems and actions they inspire are inexorably linked to each other - they must be.
Imperative 4: A map showing from where we came, and where we are going
Target versus actual is important. Actions and follow-ups are crucial too. What is often missed out in visual systems - especially the display boards and the data or reports shared with the staff or operational teams - is the sense of trends. There are two ways to display the trends.
1) Graphs of key indicators with time as the horizontal axis (X); and
2) The before and after scenarios - either visually depicted through pictures and sketches, or a few meaningful words
If only the teams see the difference being made every now and then, in spite of the natural human tendency to forget the now unimportant non-urgent problems, which were burning issues not so long ago, do the teams keep realizing the effectiveness of their own continuous improvement initiatives.
Imperative 5: Last but not the least - participation of all goes a long way
The spirit of Nemawashi (consensus building - by weighing all the options) as well as Kaizen (incremental improvements) must prevail. Nothing like the team designing the visual system, improving it continuously and proving to itself that the system is serving the purpose.
This principle of participative development, however, does not mean that all the users participate in designing. Far from it - effective and efficient participation leads to complexities being dealt with by a few expert designers, and any feedback from users being continually encouraged, systematically gathered, and used for improvement.
The scope of visual systems
Whenever, visual systems are discussed, the shop floor and production environment are the most obvious environments that come to one's mind as the areas of application in factory environments. However, equally important user audiences are other functions ranging from the senior executives to customers and suppliers. Sales reports, purchasing triggers from stock reports, load levelling charts in planning and scheduling, profitability by product segment, employee morale indicators by team, downtime or uptime of facilities, plan versus actual for new projects, slow-medium-fast moving inventories - what needs to be measured is worthy of a visual control. Only the target audience may change from context to context.
In a nutshell
Ideally a great visual system must be like a traffic light that evokes the correct response from its users without users giving even a second thought - and must not be like a verbose road code which is required to be studied by users thoroughly before they act.
As Steven Pinker aptly said, "We are visual creatures. Visual things stay put, whereas sounds fade."
Nilesh Pandit
24th November 2022