Visual Management Boards
Visual Management Boards are a key Lean tool in standardising, monitoring and improving performance in any organisation.
We have supplied Visual Management Boards to world class organisations in varying sectors across the UK and Europe.
We can take your basic idea or need for improvement and supply a professional Visual Management board in response, which will have an immediate and positive impact on your business.
VMT has the knowledge and experience to advise on best practice and implementation of Visual Management boards.
Why use Visual
Management
Boards?
Track performance and operational concerns.
Have complete control at a glance.
Create a focal point for change.
A proven method to facilitate and engage in change and improvement.
Save costs through knowledge of controllable costs and rework levels.
Communicate and make it easy to understand if an organisation or team is having a ‘good or bad day’ – create winning team mentalities
SQCDP
Display key performance documentation relating to the general main business headings of Safety, Quality, Cost, Delivery and People.
These visual management boards demonstrate a business that is balanced and looks to monitor, control and improve in all areas and functions.
Continuous Improvement
Use Visual Management whiteboards to identify ideas and opportunities to make improvements and eliminate waste.
Empower the workforce to make their workplace a more efficient and satisfying place to work.
Problem Solving
Performance Visual Management whiteboards provide a structured approach to problem solving, using facts and data and not opinions or theories. An essential tool for dealing with equipment breakdowns or critical quality concerns.
These Problem Solving boards can be used to facilitate lean training.
Short Interval Control
A Short Interval Control (SIC) Visual Management Board provides a structured process for identifying and acting on opportunities to improve the effectiveness and efficiency of production.
By breaking a production shift into incremental steps, “live” data showing under-performance can be acted upon during the shift. This can have the impact of correcting issues as they happen and not after the fact i.e. after daily or weekly reviews.
The implementation of SIC can help to: Increase OEE and productivity, Improve employee engagement as teams gain significant control over how a process is run and create fast paced improvements by utilising recent high quality data.
War on Waste
Effective Lean deployment relies on buy-in from the shop floor through to higher level management. An example of a buy-in mechanism to engage the ‘factory floor’ level is to use a War on Waste Visual Management Board.
Encouraging team members to identify waste that they see on a day-to-day basis not only helps to encourage Lean thinking but also engages and provides a vital communication channel from the factory floor through to management.
Live Performance Tracking
One of the many benefits of Visual Management is providing engagement of the working teams or shop floor with performance data. Using these types of live tracking Visual Management boards ensures that people have to interact with the boards to agree and record current performance levels and create understanding of whether performance is getting better or worse. This understanding should guide whether corrective action needs to be taken.
Before
After
Your Design
Some of our clients might have a Visual Management board that they would like to update or improve. Once you have sent over your basic idea our designers will ensure that we use your corporate branding to supply a clean consistent design.
We produce our Printed Visual Management Boards using a laminated overlay so it is simple and easy to update designs over time as projects and businesses change.
To access our Management Board template maker click the link below.
FAQ's
VMT has over 10 years in advising, developing designs, manufacture and supply of Visual Management Printed Whiteboards. We can supply Visual Management Boards to businesses to support and improve their operations in areas such as SQCDP (Tiered reporting), Problem Solving, Concern Resolution, Kamishibai, KPI tracking and many more.
We thought it might be useful to share some answers to the many questions we get asked about our Visual Management Printed Whiteboards.
– Starting from Scratch– If you are just beginning you Visual Management journey, we have the experience and skills within our team to suggest and compile designs after having had a basic discussion of what you are hoping the Visual Management Board achieve within your business.
Quite often we will then have a back forth conversation relating to the board design with our client before agreement on the final design of the board.
– Send us your basic idea- Maybe you have a very basic sketch of the design for your Visual Management board. We can flesh this out and use our industry and lean knowledge to ensure best practice is applied to the design.
We want your Visual Management board to be an effective tool for you, so if we foresee any issues with the layout or design, we will raise them. These issues may relate to spacing, terminology or other blockers to use.
– Existing design- You might have a very specific design in mind, have your own internal marketing department who have put a together or want to re-use use one of our previously supplied designs.
With any of these options we will ensure to apply relevant corporate branding to ensure professionalism, consistency and standardisation through your organisation.
Visual Management Boards have become standard across many industries. They are proven to help teams develop Lean and operational excellence behaviours such as:
– Summarising or reviewing current performance – Did we have a good day or bad day? Are we on target or not?
– Prioritising – Briefing the priority of the work to be completed – ensuring the team has direction and know what they are doing.
– Logging Issues – Giving chance for everyone to raise concerns and for individuals to agree in front of their peers to take relevant action.
– Encouraging efficient communication – allowing a team leader to have an individual conversation with all rather multiple conversations with individuals.
We are happy to share our stories of implementing Visual Management boards with our clients and how they impacted and improved their businesses.
There are many instances we have seen where organisations are using Visual Management boards to help provide Visual Control to an area of their business and are unaware of the relationship of Visual Management and Lean.
Yes, we can supply our Visual Management boards as either a Premium Framed whiteboard suitable for mounting to walls or the OUTSIDE face of one of our free-standing frames. Or, as a Steel Composite panel suitable for mounting to walls or the INSIDE of one of our free-standing frames. If you would like more information on this, please contact our team.
We have the facilities and capabilities to supply custom sized and designed magnets. We can supply magnets from small indicator symbols of around 30 x 30mm in size up to large overlays of around 2400 x 1200mm. Board magnets are an excellent way of providing live updates and functionality to your Visual Management board and we encourage their use. We have seen magnets used on Visual Management boards for applications such as: Indicating status or health of KPIs, managing movement of trains or large industrial plant, manpower planning and many more.
If you have some doubt that some members of the team might want to change the design of your Visual Management board once delivered, then we might suggest that we send out a full-scale paper print for approval before we go to full production. This allows you to have a run through of the use of the board with the team before taking full delivery of the final product and allows input to be considered on such details as: Titles, wording, colours, layout etc. This method is particularly useful if you are considering a roll-out of a set design.
We can call on our background and experiences as Lean Consultants and ex-Toyota Motor Manufacturing UK Engineers and Managers to offer introductory training on Visual Management and 5S. We can also help with ongoing support on the best practice use of the boards including: how to run a meeting, how to update a Visual Management board and how to manage progression of actions and issues.
Yes, we can supply our Visual Management Boards on frames. We use a 40mm aluminium profile which is extremely strong and provides the flexibility to modify or adapt for future uses. We can supply our frames with either fixed base plates for bolting the frame to the floor or on castors to allow the board to be wheeled in and out of position.
It is best to contact VMT for your exact requirements but depending on the complexity of the project but typically we can supply Visual Management boards within 2 weeks of approval of design work. We usually have designs to our clients within 3-5 days.
The largest Visual Management Board we can supply in one piece is 2400 x 1200mm. However, if there is a requirement, we can build up a bigger solution by using split panels. We would suggest contacting the VMT team for more information.
This isn’t an easy one to answer, the longevity of our Visual Management Boards is directly affected by several factors.
– Environment – harsh chemicals found in cleaning equipment and lubricants can, over time have a negative effect on the materials we use to manufacture our Visual Management Boards.
– Behaviours– if the board is respected and the appropriate pens and cleaning solutions are used this will have a positive effect of the life span of the Visual Management Board.
Yes, all our Visual Management boards are designed specific to each client, so we are keen to ensure the logos and branding design elements are added to the design. Consistency and a standardised approach are critical in a successful roll out of Visual Management – we keep a library of each individual clients designs so we know we are always following a standard design approach when developing a new Visual Management Board design.
We have a few options for developing the design of a Visual Management Board to include new design elements or layout in the future:
– We can supply overlays or skins to cover a section of the board – this requires some basic installation which we can quote for, or we can provide instructions.
– We can supply magnetic overlays to cover a section or the whole of the board – the advantage of a magnetic overlay is there is no installation required other that lining it up straight onto the board.
– You can recycle your existing by removing the skin and apply a new skin to the board. This is best undertaken by VMT, and we can quote for this option.