Purpose
In lean thinking, visual management means that normal and abnormal conditions are obvious without asking anyone or opening a report. A visual management board applies that principle to team performance. A good board answers three questions quickly: are we winning, what is getting in the way, and who is doing what about it?
Common types of board
- Tier or SQDC boards: daily performance by safety, quality, delivery and cost, used at tier meetings.
- Production boards: hour-by-hour output against plan.
- Improvement boards: ideas, kaizen activities and their status.
- Skills boards: a skills matrix showing who is trained on what.
- Project or strategy boards: progress on objectives and breakthrough projects.
What to include
- Targets and actuals, shown with simple red and green status.
- Trends, so a single bad day is not confused with a pattern.
- Problems and actions, each with an owner and due date.
- The meeting agenda and standard, so anyone can run the meeting.
- Escalations, showing what has gone up and what answers have come back.
Design principles
- Readable from a few metres away.
- Placed where the work happens, not in an office.
- Updated before the meeting by the people doing the work.
- Kept to what the team actually discusses; remove anything unused.
Physical or digital?
Whiteboards are simple and highly visible but hard to keep current, share across shifts or roll up across a site. Digital boards keep the same visual principles while pulling data from source systems and linking actions between tiers. Many organisations use large screens in the work area to keep the board visible.
Common mistakes
- Boards that look impressive but are never used for decisions.
- Data that is days or weeks old.
- Too much information, so the real problem is hidden.
- No link between the problems shown and actions taken.