Tag Archives: visual management

Visual Management and Mistake-Proofing for Prescription Pills

Posted on May 5, 2015 by John Hunter

Good ideas often just require some sensible thought to think of an improved approach. Management concepts can help guide such thinking, such as mistake-proofing and visual management. To apply visual management requires giving a bit of thought to how to make visually obvious what is important for people to know. Mistake proofing is often really mistake-making-more-difficult (for some reason this term of mine hasn’t caught on). I believe mistake-proofing should put barriers in the process that make a mistake hard. … Continue reading →

Posted in Management | Tagged , , , , , , , , , , , , , | 4 Comments

Magnetic White-Board Kanban Card Options

Posted on September 2, 2014 by John Hunter

Just some quick ideas for Kanban whiteboard magnetic card options from a question I answered on Reddit. Here is the best lean solution: Trying Out My Agile Kanban Board from Jon Miller. Why, well mainly I am kidding about it being the best, but if you don’t read his Gemba Panta Rei blog you should! Go add it to your RSS feed reader, before you continue with this post. Ok, welcome back. In addition to thinking his blog is great … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Quality tools | Tagged , , , , , , , ,

Not Ambiguous Sign

Posted on August 18, 2011 by John Hunter

I like the series of posts by Jon Miller on Ambiguous signs (another example). Here is a sign that got my attention recently and they succeeded in keeping me away (which I think was their intention). The area is near the Royal Palace in Johor Bahru Malaysia, though I am not certain that is what the restricted area is. It isn’t obvious to me why this location requires shooting trespassers, but I took the idea from the sign to stay … Continue reading →

Posted in Quality tools | Tagged , ,

Visual Management with Brown M&Ms

Posted on August 15, 2011 by John Hunter

When you hear about rock musicians having a clause in their contract that they must have a bowl of M&Ms in their dressing room with all the brown M&Ms removed you could be excused for thinking: what will these crazy celebrities do next. Well it might just be those crazy celebrities are using visual management (granted I think there could be better methods [a bit more mistake proofing where the real problems would be manifest] but it is an interesting … Continue reading →

Posted in Creativity, Quality tools | Tagged , , , , , , | 3 Comments

Touring Factories on Vacation When I Was Young

Posted on July 13, 2011 by John Hunter

Growing up, occasionally, a family vacation would include a factory tour related to my Dad’s work. He was providing some management or engineering consulting and took the opportunity to check in on progress and visit the gemba. Here is a photo from one of those tours (in Nigeria, I think). My brother and Mom are visible in the photo. The tours (which were not a very common occurrence) were quite enjoyable and interesting. Though I really didn’t like how noisy … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Manufacturing | Tagged , , , , | 2 Comments

Communicating with the Visual Display of Data

Posted on October 26, 2009 by John Hunter

Anscombe’s quartet: all four sets are identical when examined statistically, but vary considerably when graphed. Image via Wikipedia. ___________________ Anscombe’s quartet comprises four datasets that have identical simple statistical properties, yet are revealed to be very different when inspected graphically. Each dataset consists of eleven (x,y) points. They were constructed in 1973 by the statistician F.J. Anscombe to demonstrate the importance of graphing data before analyzing it, and of the effect of outliers on the statistical properties of a dataset. … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Quality tools, Statistics | Tagged , , , , | 1 Comment

The Importance of Making Problems Visible

Posted on April 2, 2009 by John Hunter

Great, short, presentation webcast by Jason Yip showing the importance of making problems visible. Anyone interested in software development should watch this, and it is valuable for everyone else, also. Great visuals. Related: Future Directions for Agile Management – Agile Software Development Slideshow – Leading Lean: Missed Opportunity – Information Technology and Management – Curious Cat Micro-financiers – posts on project management – Toyota Institute for Managers

Posted in IT, Lean thinking, Management, Software Development | Tagged , , , , , , , | 2 Comments

Data Visualization

Posted on August 30, 2007 by John Hunter

Data is often displayed poorly, making it difficult to see what is important. When data is displayed well the important facts should leap off the page and into the viewers mind. Edward Tufte is an expert on this topic with great books. If you have not read them, you should: Beautiful Evidence, The Visual Display of Quantitative Information, Envisioning Information and Visual Explanations. Smashing magazine has some nice examples of good display techniques in Data Visualization: Modern Approaches. I don’t … Continue reading →

Posted in Books, Creativity, Data, IT, Management, Psychology | Tagged , , ,

Visual Instructions Example

Posted on July 4, 2007 by John Hunter

How to get people to actually use instructions for using your product: make it easy to do so. This blog post illustrates a well designed instruction guide for the Seagate FreeAgent backup drive. Simple pictures make it very obvious what to do (and even includes a time stamp showing how long into the process you are – which shows you the total time it will take at one simple glance 1 minute and 36 seconds). Such instructions are a great … Continue reading →

Posted in Management, Quality tools | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments

Lean, Mean Business Machine

Posted on March 29, 2006 by John Hunter

Lean, mean business machine [the broken link was removed], from New Zealand: But it is wasted effort that is the main focus, Mr Shook says. The lean philosophy is about first making waste visible, then acting on every level in a company, from large to small, to eliminate it. This point is often overlooked – making waste visible is critical.

Posted in Lean thinking | Tagged ,

Visible Data

Posted on February 18, 2006 by John Hunter

Effective visual signals are important for effective management improvement: lean thinking emphasizes such ideas. Top 5 Rules of Effective Measurement Boards is an excellent post on how to make measurement effective. Take the time to find the important measures and then don’t keep data hidden in some drawer or computer file out of people’s view and therefore out of mind. Post the important data for everyone to see. Review the data as changes are made and see that the changes … Continue reading →

Posted in Data, Lean thinking, Management, Quality tools | Tagged , , , , , | 2 Comments

Visual Work Instructions

Posted on December 17, 2005 by John Hunter

Via Got Boondoggle? Shorter Text for Visual Work Instructions (link broken 🙁 so removed) by Steven Blackwell: The line worker may not even read text that seems excessive. We have spent the last eight years observing line workers using visual work instructions and asking them if they read the text. If the text is a short sentence, the answer is usually “yes.” If the text is more than one sentence long, the answer is usually “no.” Another recent post, Poka-Yoke … Continue reading →

Posted in Lean thinking, Management, Quality tools, quote | Tagged , , , , | 4 Comments