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Create your own Bespoke Visual Management
Clarity offers a wide range of functional bespoke visual management tools which can be branded up to your company’s brand guidelines, these tools offer functionality for the most common pain points in an organisation, which have been proven to offer value.
However, here at clarity we appreciate that not everyone fits into that box, some companies are looking for something completely different, so where do you start?
Start at the finish…
When you are designing your own bespoke visual management then you need to start at the end. Ask yourself, ‘with what you want the VM to achieve?’.
Visual Management should always have a purpose to ensure that it’s seen as a vital part of the daily routine, rather than just another task on the list.
Here are a few examples:
1 – To help drive your teams to reach their target
2 – To share information in a clear and transparent way
3 – To pass information between shifts
4 – To keep track of projects/processes
5 – To help problem solve
6 – To help plan
7 – To improve morale
8 – To support your lean program
9 – Standardise
10 – Warn about potential problems
Now you have the purpose of your visual management, you can start on designing the visual management itself. Here are a few things to consider.
What information do you want to display?
Simplicity is key here, the board should be easy to update, so make it clear what information goes where. Are you displaying the information relevant to your purpose and is it easy to access this information?
Design it with the people in mind
Think about the people who will be using the bespoke visual management, will it be easy for them to use and does it play to their strengths? For example, we once worked with a company to create a bespoke overlay for their marketing. As a creative department, they wanted space and the freedom to plan and create as well as structure to help them focus targets. This resulted in half the overlay structured to report on their KPIs and the other half designed as a Graffiti Wall give them the opportunity to draw, plan and design any idea.
What this created was a functional piece of visual management designed with the user in mind.
Does it follow the 1,3, 10 rule?
Bespoke Visual management should be easy to follow, so with that in mind Clarity’s 1,3,10 rule is a good test to see if your design is Lean.
When looking at your overlay you should be able to do the following in:
1 Second – understand the purpose of the board
3 seconds – understand the current status
10 Seconds – understand any countermeasures applied.
Have you thought about magnets?
Magnets work fantastically with our magnetic overlays as a way to show visually status. A simple red or green magnet is a quick and clear way to show whether a task is complete or not. Clarity also supplies a range of common symbols used or alternatively, you can create your own bespoke range of magnets too. This will give you the opportunity to use your own key indicators to show status meaningful to your organisation. Once you know the magnets if any that you intend to use to support your design then you can design it with those in mind.
Don’t forget to ask for help
As experts in visual management Clarity Visual Management are a fantastic resource at your fingertips to help you to create a piece of visual management that has a flow, is easy to use and will become a functional status in your workplace. Customers designing their own piece of visual management always differ, some have a very clear idea of what they would like sketched out onto a bit of paper, or in an excel document and some have an idea of what they would like but cannot visualise it in their head. There is no right or wrong way to do this, the process is flexible to suit you the customer.
From the Idea…
…To the wall
Clarity, making Lean work…
Here at Clarity Visual Management, we consult with clients both far and wide about how they can use visual management to achieve their goals, exceed their targets and make financial savings which would otherwise be lost to waste. We work with our clients to create a bespoke strategy that ensures visual management is set up for success before providing specific, high-quality Lean products to sustain the visual management program and make Lean work in the organisation long-term.
You can read more about the work we’ve undertaken with our clients by browsing through our Visual Management Case Studies.
