DailyKaizen

Over the last couple of week’s Ted has shared several useful and interesting posting about different work teams that he is engaged with and their quest to make work more visual. Last night I had a very eye opening experience. After an oversight meeting that went late into the evening I was walking down the hallway with the CIO of our organization. It was late enough that nobody else was around. Out of the blue he asked if I minded giving him a tour of the production areas so that he could see some of the visual systems that teams have been putting in place.
Over the last couple of months all of the managers and supervisors have been going through our Daily Management system training where they have picked a process to standardize and bring under control. Part of their training is to build a visual system for their process. Over the last couple of weeks I have walked by many of these visual systems, but I have been tracking at a higher level of detail and have not invested much time in learning what each team is working on. Big lesson learned, I better know the details of the work!
So I told Ernie, our CIO, sure, even though I immediately felt stress, because I was not sure if I would be able to explain the Visual Systems to him not having the knowledge at the detail level. As we walked from one team to the other I became relieved. Each visual system is based on a standard format, that provide info on process flow, customer requirements, targets, in process measures and counter measures. Without knowing the process we were both still able to know exactly what the improvement goals were, where the team stood against these goals and what the team was up to next. It was very powerful. We went to four different areas and for each we knew the story without have to ask a team to explain. Simple, informative and exciting! The transformation has begun.

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