Importance of Visual Management System in improving Workplace Effectiveness

As discussed in the change-environment-and-trigger-positive behaviour   Visual Management  System is one of the enablers to improve the workplace effectiveness and positive culture in the organization.

let us understand, what does it mean visual management and its components, application, and examples

What is visual management System?

Visual management is a concept of making the workplace more effective by making the condition or reality of workplace more obvious at a glance.

It exposes the waste or abnormality in the system so that waste or abnormality can be corrected or reduced instantly. 

It is not merely putting posters as a one-time effort, and it is a dynamic activity 

Components of visual management system:

It consists of 

1.Visual Displays
2.Visual Metrics
3.Visual Control

Visual displays :

Basically, it consists of labels, identification, instruction posters, displaying information.

It creates awareness or for educating the user about the place/ equipment/ process/facilities 

It can be in TEXT or in COLOURS to indicate relevant information to the user

Examples

Visual  Metrics :


Visual Metrics is one of the visual management systems in which emphasis would be more on to give information about Standard  Vs. Actual.

The purpose is to show 

the variance  or gap between standard vs. reality at a glance


This visual metrics brings down the subjectivity of the people on the information and also trigger the people to take action if there is variance between standard and actual.

Examples

Visual  Control :

Visual control is meant for creating error proof environment by adhering to the right way of doing the things

Examples

How to apply Visual Management System in the workplace?

As visual management system is a creative process and there is no end for improvements ideas. The more you bring your workplace with the visual management system, more transparent, higher the clarity among the team. It increases the engagement of the people.

However, we bring focus on the implementing visual management  effort  through the following steps

1. Identify the area where you would like to improve the visual management system
2. understand the problem in the selected area and decide what you would like to solve 
3. understand your audience or people background in the area and accordingly decide what components of visual management is required. Like visual display. Visual metrics or visual control.
4. Implement and make it dynamic in a sense, it needs to be updated periodically.
5. It would be more engaged, if the people involved in the work area, update the visual management.


As mentioned, Visual Management system is one of the simple, powerful, creative concepts that make people engaged towards continuous waste elimination or reduction in the workplace!

Change Environment and Trigger Positive behaviour in organization

when I asked the following question  in my management seminar, the response would be as follows

"Imagine you are in an airport. You eat the chocolate and search a dustbin to put the wrapper. However, you do not find a dustbin in a nearby area also you hear the announcement for boarding into flight. What will you do with the chocolate wrapper?"

In almost the session, to my surprise, people responded honestly as follows 

In case of  AIRPORT1, I will through  the wrapper in the corner and move on, even though it is embarrassed me, 

Whereas in case of AIRPORT 2, I will keep the wrapper in my pant pocket to find a dustbin later and dispose of it. 


What does this behavior or response indicate? 

As a human being, we create a perception about the place based on its environment ( how it is organized, cleaned, lighting, visuals, and  visibility). When the environment is more appealing, positive, conducive, it triggers positive behavior on the people.

Alternatively, when the environment is not conducive or less positive ( with things are not organized properly, low lit level, dust, dull appearance, no visuals), it triggers negative behavior on the people.


It holds good for the organizational environment as well. When the internal organization is organized neatly, it triggers positive behavior in the people, and it would get demonstrated with timely communication, care for the people, product, and equipment, . When the workplace is not organized correctly, people working in that environment also behave negatively as not caring anything and adding further chaos in the system.

Hence,
Change Environment ----Change perception ----Trigger Positive behavior

How will you create a positive environment in the workplace?

Workplace organization is based on the popular 5S principles 

1.Remove unwanted items 
2.Provide Location for each wanted items
3.Provide Identification 
4.Clean regularly 
5.Ensure the sustenance through Visual Management Systems

Keeping the workplace organized is the responsibility of all the people, and it is a way of life. It is an attitude toward the work .some organization make it as a habit, and it brings positive culture in the organization. The positive culture is being demonstrated through

1.Respecting each other
2.Transparency in communication
3.Care about people, product, and  facilities
4.Focus on continuous improvement on a daily basis
5.Recognition  of talent
6.Celebration of  work 

Even though it is organization-wide participation and continuous improvement by all employees, primarily creating a positive environment and facilitation starts from the business head or senior leadership team! 

It is an attitude towards work and life!

Challanges & Solutions approach to improve synergy among directors or partners

Except for a few organizations, most of the manufacturing organizations are managed by founders supported by other co-founders or directors. The  directors can be family members, friends or joined in the organization as working partners either due to a common interest in the business or some other value proposition. 

Generally, the partnership management provides more advantages than running as individual ownership. However, if the partnership is not governed by clear policies, terms, it will result in chaos, affect the business as well as affect the relationship among the partners.

some of the typical challenges in a partnership firm among the directors or partners

1. Clarity on sharing responsibility and accountability
2. Communication issues  

Above challenges lead to decision dilemma or delay in decision making which affects the business profitability and growth.

1. Clarity on sharing responsibility and accountability :

One of the common practices, we are seeing in most of the emerging organization is that all the directors involved in all management activities. In this process, end of the day, nobody is accountable for the business results as each one aware of the proceedings and get convinced about mediocre performance. Also, as everyone is involved in a particular business issue, the biggest dilemma arises as who has to take a final call or decision on the problem. People love to discuss the problem, challenges, ready to brainstorm and when coming to accountability on result or consequence, stuck on mainly on the decision making.

When we see this pattern in one of our client's operations, we had advised having a clear portfolio for each director by defining roles and responsibilities. (But, already they have a designation for each director with functional orientation !!) Also, we had set the KPI for each one to bring the accountability on the results.

This had resulted in clarity among the directors and they felt their personal productivity also increased. Also when coming to business decision making, the clarity on responsibility and accountability helped them to take quick decisions which affecting their function as well as the business.

2.Communication issues :

one of the reason for everyone to get involved in all activities is due to lack of structured communication process among the directors. Each one of the them wanted to be included in all activities with the intention to avoid communication problem or relationship issues among them.But this leads to only time consumption and delay in decision making. 

Also, the organization instills mediocre performance culture and in some organizations, people at middle management take advantage of the multiple director's management styles.

when we come across in one of the client , we suggested two methods to overcome communication issues

1. Weekly Review Forum for all directors to share, review weekly key performance like sales , financce and other important business issues
2. Common KPI sharing among the directors on Google share 
3. Monthly Executive meeting to review P&L before 10th of every month 

The above solutions approach helped the partnership organization to overcome the typical challenges faced by the partners and also helped them with personal productivity !!

Simple checklist for identifying ergonomic risk in workplace

As we discussed in Why Ergonomics is not given importance in SME organization? a simple checklist with little awareness to engineers, shop floor operating team will help the team to identify the ergonomic risk in the workplace. This awareness further triggers the improvement in workplace re-engineering by the operating team.

In fact, REBA (Rapid Entire Body Assessment) is a structured approach to identify the ergonomic risks in the workplace, the given below checklist is easy to understand and quick guide to identify the fatigue in the workplace by the operating team as we experienced in more than 10 + SME clients.

Ergonomic Assessment Checklist

1.Awkard Posture

2.Handling loads and moving

3.Repetitive physical activities

4.Environment and unfavorable layouts

Build an Environment and Process for Employee Engagement

One of the most fundamental reasons for a consistent growth organization is people and how they are engaging themselves toward the organizational goal. Developing people and bringing them together is the primary responsibility of the CEO or head of the organization.

Bringing the “emotional connection within” is a challenging task, but is possible with two factors. One is creating a positive environment in the organization and the second is establishing a structured, consistent process.

The environmental factor consists of providing basic amenities to the employees, visual management, and housekeeping through daily management. A positive environment triggers a positive behavior, action, and results among the employees.

The structured, consistent process includes identifying the engagement methodology for different levels of peoples, defining the administration of engagement initiatives, rewards, recognition plan, etc.

Given in the following text is the framework of employee engagement initiatives for different levels.

Maximizing profitability in emerging organization- a holistic approach

Irrespective of your external environment, you can maximize profitability in your business by looking at your opportunities holistically.I have given practical six approaches to improve the business profitability which we have tested and delivered result in our client base.

some of the approaches may be relevant to your business model as well

Hope you enjoy to watch this video clip and implement in your organization as well.

Maximizing profitability-a holistic approach 

When does your organization need external help?

     Each organization undergoes different growth cycle, and each growth cycle calls for different management practices, business processes, and employee engagement practices. For example, the systems and processes followed by the organization when it makes 5 cr~10 cr sales turnover may not be suitable when the same organization makes 25 cr or 100 cr turnover. The leadership team and the organization have to change in line with market/customer / external expectation. If the organization does not cope with the expectation, it will perish eventually.

Fortunately, a few organization adopts to the requirements on its own and managing the change thanks to the vision, growth mindset, flexibility of the leaders. However, most of the organization needs external help in bringing the necessary changes in business and management processes and inculcating the winning mindset among the people.

The purpose of seeking external people like consultants or coach is to look at the business in a different perspective, guide and handhold the team to implement the new practices and bring confidence to the organization by showing the business results.

Typically organization needs external help in any of the following situations. 

1. The business is not growing regarding sales turnover for last three years, or the growth is only incremental
2. The business is growing regarding top line, but the profitability  stagnant or downward trend or negative 
3.Both top line and bottom line stagnant and no clarity on the direction to take 
4. Increase in sales demand and product line/varieties, but struggle to cope up with growth. (struggling to meet the delivery, cost, quality, and efficiency requirements)
5. To transform the organization towards performance-based culture  by reorienting the old and new people 

Relook at your business performance and determine the right time to seek the external help for timely growth!

Why is Lost Order Analysis important for Organization?

Keeping continuous order pipeline is one of the healthiest indications of the organization. Even though ensuring order pipeline is perceived as accountability of marketing or sales function, it is actually cross-functional deliverables. 

Typically in a medium size organization, the following functions involved in order procurement process

1. Marketing or customer relationship 
2. Sales 
3. Engineering & 
4. Finance / Cost estimation 
5. Business head or pricing committee

Order procurement process indicates the speed, flexibility in decision making, teamwork, cost competitiveness and disciplined approach of the cross-functional team and management. One of the analysis indicates the organizational speed, decision making is "Lost Order Analysis."


What is meant by Lost order Analysis?:

Even though Lost Order Analysis is reactive, it analyses the reason for losing the prospective customer order. The reason could be a technical reason or regret from a technical perspective, pricing issues, delay in response from the organization, perception of the customer and so on.

This analysis will give clarity of why the organization is losing the potential customer's order.

What are the parameters to be analyzed? :

As said, this is cross-functional deliverables, and the business head must review the cross-functional team on the following parameters and the gap 

1.No of potential customers asked for queries  Vs. No of queries responded on time
2.No of quotes responded Vs. No of quotes converted into a sales order
3.Reasons for losing the potential orders

this analysis will give an insight about the organization on the following 

1. The effectiveness of marketing function to identify, grasp the opportunities
2. The cross-functional effort in ascertaining technical, commercial feasibility on time
3. decision-making ability on pricing 
4. Speed in responding and followup with prospective customers
5. Cost & Quality competitiveness in the market from customer's perspective


How frequently the organization needs to do  Lost order Analysis?

The frequency depends on the industry type, customer 's profile, lead time to respond. Generally, we suggest to our client to do the lost order analysis at least once in a quarter, as it is a reasonable time frame to understand the losses.

Role of business head:

The role of a business head is critical to conducting lost order analysis reviews as typically the functions point each other for losing orders and most of the time from our experience, the organization losing the orders due to both strategic and operational reasons.

The frequent review by business head will help the organization to improve the policies, business processes and of course to improve sales turnover of the business.

For example, when we initiate this analysis in one of our client, the team had realized that the majority of the orders lost due to High pricing. When we did deep analysis on the pricing, the cause identified was on the "cost estimation method" in which "lot size" was given overemphasis while costing in engineering function as well as at business head level. Once team identified the mistake and policies were framed on " lot size" in costing. After the corrective action,  we could see the reduction in the quote value and subsequently order conversion rate was increased significantly. 

The point is as a business head, if you do the lost order analysis frequently along with your cross-functional team, you will get a lot of insights about your order procurement process, and you can improve your business turnover.

 Also, this type of analysis will improve your cross-functional working cultures towards speed on decision making and execution