Man has an innate inclination to “visualize” the final product when he is creating something. He “sees” it in his mind’s eye. He can also recall that particular vision, whenever required. This is the reason why a good management needs to take full advantage of this inherent tendency of human beings to memorize something they have seen and then “recall,” “see” or “visualize” that particular item in the future. This tendency should be encouraged with the use of visualization boards.
These production control boards are not only helpful in giving you a clear “picture” of important information in the shape of flowcharts, graphs, charts, statistics, and numbers, but also they are going to be stored away in your “mind’s eye.” That is after the data has been interpreted properly by your mind, telling you all about the status of a particular project and how far you have come on your road to achieving the final goal well within a given deadline.

So how can visualization boards lead to increased efficiency?

Once upon a time, the project status reports were given in the form of weekly reports to the management, by the production manager. The team had limited access to the information about the status of the project and how successful it was, till date. The production manager would attend the weekly or periodically scheduled meeting and then inform the management about the progress made. Any potential problems were then discussed, brought out and tackled. Workers and team members were perhaps then asked to “show cause” why a particular goal was not achieved within a given time period, after proper analysis of these results. This was a long drawn process.

But nowadays, you can consider a visualization board to be a subconscious tool for spurring your team into putting in more effort to achieve a goal. When the updated information is placed on the production board, and has been seen by members of the team, visual aids in the shape of colors can give them immediate inkling about the status.

The RAG principle of Red, Amber and Green can give them immediate information about whether everything is going smoothly, (green), some area has hit a snag somewhere (Red) or the production team has come up against a problem, which is being solved, but production has not stopped (Amber). Now that the team members know that the management knows about the problems and is taking firm steps in solving it as soon as possible, they are going to be encouraged to put in their best effort to get the work done on time.

How can a team work efficiently with the judicial use of production boards? A lot of time and energy was spent in weekly meetings, cutting in production time, in the past. But thanks to production boards, team workers have easy access to information right on the site itself. They can understand the information set out clearly on the board. They know that they are going the right way in achieving their goals. Thanks to this easy access of information, they are going to get real-time data. This can include the days’ goal; the target achieved or not achieved the previous day, product delivery status, production status and other pertinent information which can streamline the production process.

So once you have that information, you can encourage your team to work harder, work smart and work more efficiently, to reach beyond a given target. As long as the goal is achievable and has been done before, your team will try its best to achieve it, yet once again. And if it has not been achieved, they can challenge themselves to try to achieve it, keeping efficiency, time management and product quality within their minds.

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