Visual Workplace—Visual Thinking (Gwendolyn Galsworth, Ph.D., Visual-Lean Enterprise Press, 2005) offers many examples and hundreds of photos that show how visual devices can make it easier for employees to find tools, track work status, eliminate unnecessary work and error-proof assembly processes. But for anyone who has ever been involved in a 5S program, painted yellow lines on the factory floor or put together a shadow board, it may be time to take visual management to the next level.
In this book Galsworth explains how the visual workplace can represent a strategy for imbedding informational transparency into an enterprise at all levels, from the maintenance department to the board room. In addition to visual management tools and techniques, she focuses on the change management process. She spends two chapters addressing the challenge of creating a work culture that is aligned with continuous improvement, a necessary starting point before launching any new initiative.
As Peter Dobbs, v.p. operations, Europe, Africa and Middle East, Honeywell Environmental and Combustion Controls, writes in the foreword, “Having taken many companies and factories through the journey to lean, introducing flow, single-point accountability, standardized work, teams, and takt time-based production, visual workplace/visual thinking is the one tool that not only ensures sustainment, it is also a cornerstone of all further improvement opportunities.”
