Visual Metrics

A good overall metric which lists details about "Environment" (safety and environmental hazards), "Quality", "Delivery", and "Cost" (or sometimes "Productivity"). These 4 items form the basis for an overall metric for the performance of a department or complete factory.

This one looks very nice and professional, but I would have preferred if the data was entered by hand by the production associates. That would help reinforce an emotional feeling of ownership for the performance of the team.

Another example of an EQDC board. Again, this is very professional looking, but I would prefer hand-entered data from the person actually doing the work.

A simple board for a production department.

A simple board for a production department. This one lists profit sharing information for the production associates.

Another example of how changeover time is publicly tracked. This one is mounted on a particular machine that took a long time to change over.

This facility had a problem with a large backlog of unfilled orders. (What a nice problem to have!) This board was placed along a central hallway that almost every associate passed several times per day. The data lists the daily production by product category, and the total backlog of that category. ("Customer" refers to external customers, while "Affiliate" refers to products ordered by sister plants in other divisions of the same company.)

This is one of the most powerful (and underutilized!) visual metrics available. It sets very clear expectations, enhances the emotional attachment and ownership of responsibility for production, and allows managers to quickly identify (and potentially correct) problems in production.

Organizations that fully embrace this tool find it invaluable.

Another example of my favorite visual metric.

We prefer to react in a public, positive way to good news, and privately to bad news. Here's how I recommend good news gets recognized on a Day-by-the-Hour board. This lets the associates know that management has reviewed the board, and is appreciative of the hard work it takes to hit our goals.

Managers confer privately with the associates who did not make goal, and try to find (and correct) the problems which interfere with hitting the goal. These corrective actions may be disciplinary action, but are more likely to be technical fixes. By attacking the technical problems, I find that people tend to rise to the challenge and ensure they work hard enough to hit the goal.

Another example of how management responds to good or bad news.

Also notice how the goal is not the same for every hour. We reduce the goal based on actual working time. In this case, the associate is expected to be on lunch break, so will not make a full hour's production, and so the goal has been appropriately reduced.

This one isn't as pretty as the others, but who cares? The important thing is that we measure and respond to the data.

This type of board is pretty common in factories. I'd prefer to have someone manually write the number of days since an accident, but this is also a good way of showing it.

Beware, that you will often see this type of board that has obviously not been updated in a very long time. It should go without saying that neglecting to update a Visual Metric is one of the worst management sins that can be committed. If management doesn't care enough about Safety to update the sign, they obviously don't care much about safety at all.

Not all visual metrics are formal, printed signs and boards. Often, a flipchart is all that is needed to convey information. In this case, a particular machine needed attention and a team of operators and engineers was attacking a problem. We don't like to make improvements in secret; we want everybody to know what we are doing.

A simple flipchart allowed for good, simple, public communication among the team members, and allowed everybody else to know what was going on.

Another example of how a flipchart was used as a metric and communication tool.

In this case, it was used to track action items to correct safety problems with a piece of equipment.

Another very powerful, and underutilized visual metric.

You just had one of your crew call in sick. Who will run that machine today? Who is capable?

Long-time supervisors feel this tool is unnecessary, since they already know who can do what jobs. Why keep that info in your head, when we can have a system that does it for you?

And why not let everybody know who can do various jobs? Won't this encourage less-well trained associates to become capable of doing those jobs too?

Another example of a skills matrix.

This system works for engineering jobs too.

I once had to manage an engineering department where I was not an expert at the processes being used. I let the engineers tell me what their capabilities were, then knew immediately who I could assign to a project.

A close up of the chart above.

The engineers rated their skills for me in things like CAD drawing and the various processes used. "E" meant "Expert"; "A" meant they were knowledgeable, but probably couldn't teach it to someone else; "C" meant they knew it, but not very well; "T" meant they were in training for that skill.