Lean Visual Process Controls (VPC)

Visual Process Controls is about:

• Establishes and posts work priorities
• Visually displays whether expected daily, weekly, monthly work performance/goals were met or not

• Allows for better understanding of work flow and inputs
• Quickly identifies abnormal conditions
• Displays standardized methods in use
• Communicates performance measures
• Displays the status of elements critical to safe and effective operations
• Provides feedback to/from team members, supervisors, management
• Eliminates or reduces the need for meetings

When to use it
Pretty much always

How to do it

Production Summary Boards (Takt Boards)

• Monitors the output of a process step or process in order to judge if it is meeting customer demand
• Takt boards should provide this information:
- The specific work being done
- The desired speed or completion rate
- Actual completion rate

Production Process Boards

Used to communicate information about an improvement project or process improvement activities. They should list this information relevant to a specific workplace

• Jobs in process
• WIP and its dollar value
• Productivity rates
• Actual vs. desired lead time and output
• Unresolved issues – categorized between what the work team can handle on its own and what it needs help with (and state from whom)

Dashboard Metrics

Can be used at either the workgroup level or corporate wide. CAUTION: The higher the level that dashboard metrics are used the more complex and numerous they become. Metrics should be confined to the relevant few and to those things that the organizational and its people can really do something about. Potential metrics at the workgroup level would include:

• Rolled throughput yield (RTY)
• On-time delivery
• Weekly takt rate average
• Equipment uptime/downtime, unscheduled maintenance time
• Productivity
• Sigma level