Design Thinking Tools Reflection – Visualization

Challenge & Selection

The challenge consisted of successfully conducting a productivity workshop covering a process chain in  supply chain operations. Invited to the workshop were the department head, several managers, a  supervisor, 4 ground level staff operators and an assistant for taking notes and summarizing agreed  action items. The workshop was run by a process improvement specialist.

All participants fulfill different roles and functions within the organization and therefore have very different  points of view as well as assumptions and expectations on where the “pain areas” were located along the  value chain. In order to provide a common understanding and underlying common subject matter for all  stakeholders we chose to map out the existing process and value chain and therefore chose visualization  as a tool during the workshop. Once the process was visualized everyone was clear about which process  or sub-process in the chain we were talking about which avoided confusion or lengthy discussions and  explanations.

Application

We started the process as a team by going through the process chain step by step. At first we defined the  start and end point of the process we were trying to improve. In between the start and end point we  mapped out each individual sub-step in detail and everything was put up on a wall for everyone to see.  Once all process steps were mapped out each individual team member was asked to write down on post- it notes the individual “pain points” pertaining to a particular step in the chain. These were individual steps  that from their point of view were not conducted in an ideal fashion and wasteful. The post-it notes were  then put up on the wall as well and pinned to the appropriate step of the chain. This part of the exercise  was done individually and in quiet so to avoid louder or more authoritative participants to overpower  quieter participants. The goal was to have everyone’s opinion up on the wall.

Insight & Approach

Through applying the visualization technique it was very easy to see as a result that the perceived pain  areas all concentrated around a particular set of process steps. This meant that very quickly the  workshop group was able to move on and focus on these specific items without much discussion or  argument. It also enabled team members who were not very familiar with the pain areas to quickly learn  more about the issues that the other contributors were facing in that area. As a next step mind  brainstorming and mind mapping was used as a technique to identify practical solutions to the pain points  defined earlier. The visualization technique definitely helped to facilitate a focused team effort and will  definitely be used again for the next workshop.

