Reflection – Visualization

Challenge & Selection

The tool I use is the tool of visualization or called visual thinking to let the different internal

department, to detail understand the issue before  starting to investigate the root cause

and corrective action. I use this approach with our internal customer who are in charge of

the customer & manufacturing product quality. Then based on this tool, we can define and

have a good discussion on the problem statement and easily to find root cause in supplier.

Then we can have good corrective action for those issues to have good improvement

solution.

Application

I use the concept to “front-stage/back-stage” to discuss those case. The front-stage/back-

stage approach helps to reinforce the notion that every service – even an internal service –

has customers with whom the service provider interacts and internal processes that enable

the organization to provide the service. The template I often start with also has a column on

the left to identify Partners and Value Chain Providers and a column on the right to identify

Oversight Organizations, such as customer & manufacturing quality department. If the front-

stage/back-stage view can’t work, then I will create a different type of visual, either based

on a high-level process flow with swim lanes for different stakeholders, or another format.

For the activity, I give different department for two-three questions to answer, such as: 1)

What key elements are missing from the graphic? 2) What would you change about the

graphic to make it more accurately reflect your problem space? I give them approximately

20 minutes to discuss the questions and mark up the graphic. Then I have each group report

out on their answers to those three questions while pointing to the mark-ups on their

poster. As each group reports out, I record commonalities in the insights of each group, and

then additional insights that come from the group discussion on an additional copy of the

graphic.

Insight & Approach

What I have learned from this exercise is how to consolidate every group’s opinion and

feedback. Then we can draw the graphic based on those opinion. The graphic can gives the

different group to share everyone’s perspective and develop insights then find out the root

cause of their problem. Based on this good practice, each department can understand the

real problem and can find out the solution based on the graphic.

