Some of the biggest opportunities is in providing a solution to the problems that people either miss or can’t articulate – or, don’t even recognize as a problem, even though it really is a problem. That’s one critical aspect of Kaizen.
While I don’t drink coffee, I have many friends that do and I’ve seen them struggle with the cup of coffee they buy in the morning from Starbucks Coffee or other places.
Think about it – a cup of coffee shouldn’t be that difficult to manage, but yet I’ve seen people:
- Get burned by coffee
- Spill their cup of coffee
- Drop their cup of coffee
Most likely, the people that have experienced any of the above incidents from their coffee drinking probably thought that the incident “comes with the territory” or is one of those “live-with” things that come with life.
Not so.
Below is a simple solution, using Visual Management that aims to prevent the above defects:
We know that one of the principles of Visual Management is to make things obvious. Well, the image above aims to do just that 1.
For the coffee drinkers out there – would the above help you in your coffee drinking?
- Hat Tip to David Anderson for the image (twitter.com/agilemanager) ↩
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Vicente Lluch says
More close of the cofee example. My wife never knew when the contents in the dishwaser were dirty or clean. I said, put a signal when the cleaning cycle have finished. She puts a red clothes-peg into the machine. When she starts putting dishes in the washer she hangs the clothes-peg in a place we can see easily. In that way we manege that issue.
Best,
Mark Graban says
I ‘ve had many a bad experience with Starbucks not putting the lid on properly. I’ve learned to “inspect” this as a customer. Not cool.
I think the example you show here is cool, but it seems more like a work instruction and a visual aid than “visual management.”
I was taught that visual management is something that allows you to see how the process is performing at a glance. I don’t think this example quite fits into that category.
Pete Abilla says
Hi Mark – yes, I agree with you and that’s clearly the formal use of the term and is aimed at “making hidden things unhidden”.
My use of it in this context fits squarely with work instructions as you state. It just so happens that effective and simple work instructions contain pictures too.