Shopfloor Management: The Visual Management in a Production Workshop
The workshop is an integral part of the company because it is the production, assembly or manufacturing area. Thus, it is essential that it is well coordinated. Shopfloor Management is at the of Lean Management with the aim of creating the factory of the future, accompanied by Industry 4.0.
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What is Shopfloor Management?
Shopfloor Management is a specific management method for production workshops and factories that creates a clear, secure, stabilized and operational work process. According to Mr. Kiyoshi Suzaki, author of The New Shop Floor Management, this technique develops the management of the workshop as a whole, i.e. by stocks, equipment, operations, manufacturing, processing and more.
Shopfloor Management is based on 3 fundamental pillars in order to properly manage and coordinate its production workshop:
Genba (also Gemba) - "where the reality is": Where added value is created, where problems occur, where customer satisfaction is achieved. Gemba is a process of going to the shop floor and identifying waste (MUDA) and opportunities for improvement.
Genchi Genbutsu - "field meeting": This is a practice of Toyota Production System (TPS), encouraging decision-makers to go into the field to see the reality of things and to communicate with collaborators to discover potential problems.
Setting Up Workshop Management Within Your Company
A good workshop management starts by highlighting the industrial objectives given to the production teams. Each of these objectives must be monitored and measured using performance indicators. These results will allow the progress of production to be monitored in real time but also to improve flows if necessary in order to follow a complete LEAN Manufacturing approach. Visual Management allows companies to improve the management of the company at the workshop level using tables, performance monitoring,and problem or maintenance monitoring (TPM).
Visual management must take into account the organizational characteristics of the company by utilizing two time scales:
Daily Rhythm - A short time scale that allows quick reactions to frequent problems.
Weekly Rhythm - A long time scale that highlights underlying trends.
Effective visual management imperatively combines visual and oral communication so that the exchange of information between people is effective, two-way, and leads to rapid decision-making as close to the field as possible.
This association is done through meetings based on visual information: for example, 5-minute operational meetings, weekly meetings and monthly meetings.
The workshop dashboard provides a good overview of all relevant data, current topics and projects in production. This is a real requirement for the accurate presentation of key data. On the shop floor dashboard, all employees can see where projects are at and where problems or deviations occur.
In addition, the daily exchange of information, as well as the centralized visualization, immediately shows problems in the production processes. Reaction times are thus reduced and problems can be identified and solved much earlier.
Visual management shows normal or abnormal situations in an area of activity (production or service). The aim is to quickly visualize the relevant indicators of a department or workshop in order to be able to manage the different activities efficiently.
Visual management can be considered the lever of the company's performance and thus allow the involvement of everyone by relying on "sight", "knowledge" and "action".
Increase production efficiency through continuous improvement.
Empower teams in order to strengthen their performance.
Positively influence the turnover of the manufacturing company.
Faster Information Flow
The flow of information is triggered by the shop floor management. Periodic meetings ensure that production processes are immediately visible and understandable to the management. Thus, operations in other divisions can be better coordinated.
Summary: Shopfloor and Visual Management
Visual management must be adapted to the specificities and missions of each of the sectors in which it will be deployed. Organization used in production can also be applied to offices. Tertiary activities can be grouped according to a process logic in a customer-supplier internal chain. Defined in this way, these entities can easily be linked, according to their missions, to the production sectors and the establishment.
The success of Shopfloor Management requires the joint willingness of employees and management to participate in the process. Shopfloor management should therefore not serve as a control instrument for the management, but primarily to improve communication and put people back at the heart of the organization.
Direct management support during a LEAN process.
Thanks to the transversal and hierarchical composition of a workshop management team, it is possible to develop a communication space where the operator and the management can discover and solve problems together. Thanks to this principle of joint cooperation, there is no longer any room for lack of operational visibility.
