REFLECTION – VISUALIZATION: HOW TO APPLY VISUALIZATION IN A

MANUFACTURING LINE

Challenge

For around a year, my organization wasn´t capable of controlling and following the product flow  in the principal manufacturing line. We used to see a lot of disorder and chaos, and this impeded  us to give the product on time, nor in the correct quantities and, of course, without the desired  quality. This also meant that the clients couldn´t perceive the value we were trying to offer. Cause  of the blurred lead time and all the problems of our internal clients or workers. They felt  dissatisfied and unhappy with the line's current state. We needed to disrupt the way things were  done. A lot of ideas had emerged, but none of them were tangible enough to implement. Neither,  the line supervisors were capable of express the situation.    Selection

As it was necessary, we needed a tool that made us capable of transmitting ideas tangibly and  concretely. We had to sweep away ambiguity with the use of simple methods: a simple drawing  or an image. We made all, the problems and solutions, visible and clear with the help of  visualization.

Application

We knew that for solving the challenge we had to identify the workers and line´s true problems.  We had to develop a shared understanding of the real problems. That´s why we analyzed and  explained the real objections. We applied simple but effective ways to explain the situation,  photographs, storyboarding, storytelling, and even draw the working line´s layout.

We divided the problem into three main causes: the workflow direction, the space occupied by  the workers, and the meaning they felt in their work. Those causes allowed us to make changes  in the line´s layout and gave more care to the workstation. Training and formation to our workers  improved their work´s value perception. Today we can identify times, quantities, and of course,  the quality has improved a lot since then.

Insight and Approach

We learned that visualization guided us to a more simple but deep way of understanding the  true problems of our organization. The current situation can be taken more realistically if we  can express making things feel real. That´s why we pretend to use this tool several times, more

precisely with all the stakeholders around the value chain, so we can communicate more  effectively the problems that the organization may have. And what's more, the solutions!

