Maximize your company’s efficiency with visual management

Visual management is an ever-present part of our lives. From traffic lights and signs along the road to scoreboards keeping track of each team’s points in a basketball game. Visual management is everywhere. Its purpose is to quickly send a message that anyone and everyone can understand immediately. 

In the workplace, visual management is a matter of presenting a quick and easy overview of how things are going in the company. A simple glance at the information board should be all employees have to do to understand exactly what needs to be done. By continuously visualizing workflows, it becomes easier to identify areas of improvement.

Why Should I Incorporate Visual Management into my Work?

If you’ve ever worked on a project where multiple teams were involved, you know how easy it is for different teams to interpret the same instructions differently, despite the fact that everyone is given the same information. This unfortunate reality is an unnecessary hindrance to workflows, and it’s the perfect example of why detailed information isn’t always the best choice. Visualization is key!

Two Basic Concepts in Visual Management

At the core of Lean management and continuous improvement, there are two basic concepts that highlight the importance of visualizing problems.

• The Japanese lake: A lot of companies make the conscious decision to produce more than they need as a safety buffer, which inhibits them from seeing the problems under the “surface”. The idea behind “the Japanese lake” is to have as little water in the lake as possible. In other words, you empty out your warehouse and produce only what you need. In doing so, the problems that were previously hidden beneath the safety buffer rise to the surface. The Japanese lake goes hand in hand with “just in time production”, which is another key concept in Lean.
• Jidoka: The basis of Jidoka is programming machines to autonomously react when something goes wrong. This can be achieved, for example, by the machine automatically shutting down or with blinking red lights. The goal of Jidoka is to address potential problems as soon as they arise. According to this concept, the machine operator should be able to go about other tasks while the machine is operating. 

The two concepts are built on the idea of visualizing problems to be able to rectify them as soon as possible. Every problem that arises is an opportunity to improve!

The Benefits of Visual Management 

When you continually incorporate visual management into your work, you improve your organization’s efficiency significantly. The benefits include:

• Improved production.
• Increased team engagement.
• Fewer incidents.
• Achieving goals.

Visual Management with Mevisio

Visual management through analogue means is a good first step, but to unlock an organization’s full potential, digital visual management is key. With Mevisio, you get effective visualizations of live, up-to-date information that can be shared between different teams. As an added bonus, you and your employees will never have to decipher someone’s impossible handwriting on a whiteboard or waste time erasing and prepping boards again. 

The Boards

Mevisio’s lean boards are designed to be effective tools for goal management, planning, and activity tracking. The design is based on three principles:

• Flexibility. The boards should be customizable based on needs.
• Ease. The boards should be easy to understand and use.
• Simplicity. It is important to present information in a simple and attractive way.

Diffrent functions

Our boards have several different uses and functions. You can, for example, visualize your KPIs together with information, checklists, attendance and task management for effective daily meetings. By visualizing KPIs, you get an insight into how things are going for the business. The board consists of three columns with an indicator meter, a trend graph and a chart showing the distribution and other underlying information. This board can be easily integrated with other data collection systems.

You can also take your Kaizen work to the next level with special information sharing features. You can also improve security with our SQCDP and 5S functions. Project management also gets a boost thanks to the ability to get an overview of all ongoing and upcoming projects.

All Mevisio Boards are Customizable

Use the above boards as a jumping-off point - all of the boards can be modified based on your specific needs. There are many ways to visualize data, which is why we offer a wide variety of modules for every situation imaginable. 

Want to find out more? Discover how Mevisio’s boards can make your work more efficient.