I will still read the wall!
What’s the test to see if Lean is working? Old automotive SQA’s go in the toilet and read the walls, new SQA’s walk on the line and see when the last time the control boards were updated-both great barometers for a Lean continuous improvement journey’s impact.
Real control boards manage the work going on in the area, and the area wouldn’t function without them. Charts should always be dog eared, lines drawn in dry wipe pens, hand prints are great and the best ones have an ogre who appears if you look at them and asks you why you are looking at HIS board.
They should always be the output of deployment, ideally standardised across an organisation and very visual. All people within an organisation should be part of the deployment process and mentioned on the control boards.
We should have KPI’s and targets that measure all process in terms of input and output, capability around project and incremental improvement, escalations, strategic intent and team training. Anything else for me is a bonus.
Great companies do this but still if you want to know hats really happening read the bog wall. There is another great blog on continuous improvement written by Prof. Peter Hines
Deployment Boards in action
