I don’t run across good articles on Visual Factory very often (other than here in my own blog)but here’s one (The Language of Lean is Visual) at A Lean Journey.

If you put my arm up behind my back and told me I could pick just one lean method, it would be visual factory.  As Tom says in his post:

“The goal in Visual Factory is to create a “status at a glance” in the workplace. This refers to an operating environment where anyone can enter the workplace and:

See the current situation (Self-explaining)

See the work process (Self-ordering)

See if you are ahead, behind or on schedule (Self-regulating) and

See when there is an abnormality (Self-improving)”

It’s like I tell my clients: “You should be able to bring someone off the street, give them a 10-minute overview of the operations, then have them tell you the real time status of the process in front of them.”

In the Visual Factory, everyone (including new folks) know what to do, how to do it, when to do it and whether they’re doing it well or not.  All the time.