Don't forget the corrective action!

Lean Nation;

During my work with a client this week, I had the chance to review a new set-up of a process level visual management system. The system has the outcome measures in clear view. The event by event process control board was in place an in perfect order. Each customer had a plan, and and the actual was recorded. since each customer followed a different flow path, the activities were tailored by customer. Completed work was easily identifiable.

The first principle of visual management was in place. Secondly, the sources of variation when the standard was missed were identified. Each deviation from standard was identified in real-time and a histogram was created to allow analysis of the sources of variation.

Over time a histogram can be re-arranged into the format of a Pareto chart. A Pareto chart is a histogram with decreasing frequency displayed from left to right. The Pareto principle holds that 80% of the variation is caused by 20% of the sources.

This allows the team to focus improvement on the right things. It would have taken less than 1 minute to create a Pareto diagram.

The final piece in the visual management system is taking action. Seeing normal from abnormal is only valuable if you take ACTION! A simple action plan will usually suffice. To be a plan, someone has to do something by a certain date. I usually deploy a simple What, Who and When (also known as WWW)table to capture the action plans.

Solving the problems can require more complex problem solving techniques, however, simple tools such as 5 Why's, and Cause and Effect Diagrams will resolve most issues. These can be documented on either A-3 or A-4 documents to capture organizational learning and enable the team to follow the scientific method.

So remember, a robust visula management systems shows normal from abnormal, captures deviations from normal, and inlcudes the corrective action to get the process back into control.

Lean Blessings,

Ron

Ron Bercaw
www.breakthroughhorizons.com