Useful Resources

Lean in a Mining Application
An article provided by the Lean Mining Network on the implementation of Lean within Rio Tinto.

Visual Workplace

Can you imagine playing a football game without knowing the score?  How long would you maintain real interest in the game?  The score makes the action interesting by defining and measuring success.  It inspires players to lift their performance. 

It is the same in the workplace. How often do we expect people to work without knowing what success looks like...without knowing whether today has been a good or a bad day?

A visual workplace is one in which:

  • Performance information is available to everyone, and
  • The wisdom, knowledge and experience of all workers is respected and used to steadily improve the business. 

It is based on the premise:

“Employees are intelligent individuals who are motivated by work that keeps them informed about how their efforts affect the outcome and gives them the power and responsibility to reach their goals.” Michel Greif, The Visual Factory (Ref 8)

Visual workplace is part the Lean Manufacturing, but also exists as a stand-alone tool and has been used successfully outside of a general Lean implementation. It is a key empowerment tool, and effectively supports and sustains project-based improvement activities (eg Kaizen events or Six Sigma projects).

Some key attributes of an excellent visual workplace implementation:

Highly-visible information centres are used by teams throughout the business - from shop-floor to senior management - to review performance against target, identify issues and track their resolution.  They are used to engage everyone in improving the business.

  • Information is displayed in such a way that a visitor to the area can easily interpret the information. Colours and other visual indicators are used to allow performance against target to be understood at a glance.  Graphs are used to show trends.
  • Wherever practical, the metrics and charts etc in the information centre are updated manually because this increases ownership and understanding of the data.

The metrics tracked in the information centres have the following characteristics:

  • Team members own the metrics and feel accountable for achieving the targets.  The metrics represent things within the team's control, or key inputs to the team’s work process.
  • They represent things the team is actively trying to improve. 
  • They are consistent with the business strategy.
  • The data changes frequently (eg daily or shift-by-shift data), since people quickly lose interest in slow-moving data. 
  • Only a small number of key metrics is tracked.  These metrics  are revised as improvement priorities change.

Regular meetings are carried out in the information centres, involving all key stakeholders.  These meetings have the following characteristics:

  • Meetings are short, and focus on identifying issues and tracking their resolution.
  • Data is updated prior to the meeting, and whoever is responsible for the update comes to the meeting armed with relevant information about the performance.
  • People ask challenging questions in a non-accusatory way. Respect for others is shown by all.
  • When a target is not met, the team raises this as a concern and assigns someone the accountability to address it.
  • Concerns and solutions are tracked visually as part of the information centre.  They are reviewed during the meetings to ensure they get actioned in a timely way.

Solutions are developed outside the meetings. 

  • These solutions are based on “going and seeing” the problem first hand, not relying on assumed or second-hand information.  A good root cause methodology is used.  Significant or repetitive issues become the focus of continuous improvement projects.