Visual Workplace Radio: Let The Workplace Speak

The problem with using the term “line” interchangeably with “border” is that a line is a geometric coordinate. It does not have a performance function. But a border not only tangibly contributes to the nature and performance of work, it also functions dynamically as an operational partner in how, when, and where work gets done. The more we understand this, the more we recognize how borders can help us create work that makes sense. On this week’s show, Gwendolyn Galsworth (your host, author, and visual expert) discusses ways you can add dimensions of meaning to your borders so they can extend, control, and reveal the work itself. When we get very clever with borders, we can even make them imbed time into the process. Yes, borders change our understanding of the flow and changes in work content. As a result, our visual intelligence grows. And as we get smarter, our borders get smarter as well. Tune in and learn more—especially if you want to amp up your current 5S approach.

How do you assess a workplace for visuality? How do you determine the current level of a site’s visual competency? What are the considerations? What do you look for—and how do you know decide what it means? This week, your host and visual expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, returns to her favorite topic—The Visual Workplace—and shares her secrets and insights about conducting a visual site assessment (the first of two to three shows on this subject). Hear how she sets up her walk about and how she looks for and assesses what is there. Learn what she means when she states that her job is to tell merely by looking—and then to tell the difference merely by looking. Things get even more interesting when she reveals her other big job: to see what is not there. And what happens when she suddenly discovers that 10-15 other people want to join her as she tours. Listen as she seeks evidence of a system—first of a production system; second of an improvement system; and third of a system of visuality.

Until a company understands the logic and power of borders, borders are merely treated as so many lines—useful for neatness and order but not much more. Few people will expect performance to improve because of them, let alone positively impact KPIs. What a surprise to discover that borders (especially when combined with robust addresses) can measurably increase productivity on the departmental level, even while helping build a work culture of continuous improvement if there is none. And if such a culture already exists, borders will strengthen it. On this week’s show, Gwendolyn Galsworth (your host, author, and visual expert) presents the reasons that justify borders on a functional as well as cultural basis. Tune in and learn how borders help to make the workplace transparent, building accountability and a PDCA loop in the floor and work surfaces. Listen as Galsworth describes dozens of examples and you imagine or re-imagine the role robust borders can play in your company.

Borders are the work horses of operator-led visuality—and rarely utilized to their full potential. Over the past several weeks, your host, author, and visual expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, has walked us through the Smart Placement formula (Function + Location = Flow) so we can position workplace items in locations that connect and align their functions. Now nail that relationship in place through borders, addresses, and (if possible) ID labels—a trio of device categories that imbeds the visual where. We begin with borders, starting with the floor and moving up to walls, benches, shelving, cabinets, and drawers. In the end, borders get installed for everything that casts a shadow—a requirement that applies equally to easy-to-move items as well as to those that never budge (machines and tall shelves). Plus when you learn to apply borders effectively, they can get smarter as you get smarter. Join us this week LIVE! Learn about borders and their powerful visual performance vocabulary.

Visuality based in principles means you can continue to expand workplace transparency far beyond the first cycle. Over the past two months, your host and visual workplace expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, has explained and described a set of 14 Smart Placement Principles and how to imbed them into the living landscape of work. The result? The flow of work content based on the actual function of the things that populate the work environment. In today’s show, this discussion is completed and next steps described. In addition, Galsworth shares key insights from the project she has undertaken in parallel to her show: revitalizing and strengthening her approach to poka-yoke/visual guarantees. In it, the true meaning of 100% Source Inspection becomes clear: the conversation between attributes. And the real use of poka-yoke devices comes to light: imbedding those attributes deeply into the process of work—or better yet into the design of the product so it can only be made right. Tune in for more.

The final three of the fourteen principles of Smart Placement focus on opportunities hidden in thin air. What, for example, is meant by “negative space?” And how do you turn it into a positive factor that helps the enterprise succeed? This is just one of the many imbedded questions this set of principles reveal. In this final Smart Placement show, Gwendolyn Galsworth (your host and visual workplace expert) discusses this and other important content that can help you utilize Smart Placement, either as an powerful doorway to robust 5S or as a set of stand-alone lessons that can be used by any work area keen on improvement—whether assembly area, hospital floor or engineering office. One thing is sure: The past eight episodes of The Visual Workplace have demonstrated that where the things of work are located is of vital importance and there is more to learn about that than has ever been contemplated. Tune in and find out for yourself. This a LIVE, call-in show. Let us hear from you!

Piles of things is a known trigger for massive motion. As we continue our journey through the fourteen principles of smart placement, we learn not only how to order those piles but how to organize them to support our performance outcomes. This week, your host and visual workplace expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, walks you through Principle 9: ways to sort not only components and supplies into a coherent pattern but, if need be, the entire layout of your area. Or in the case of Scania Trucks, the entire production floor; the result: a 30% increase in productivity and cancellation of plans to build a new plant. Then, in Principle 10, you learn how co-locate different workplace items for a specific task. Called “Design-To-Task,” this approach is indispensable to complex machine change over, patient delivery or assembly processes. Then on to “Use the Existing Architecture,” one of the many double-up functions in workplace visuality. Tune in and learn how to utilize these in your company.

Flow is pull’s foundation. Pull is flow under demand, driven by time. This week we focus on Principle 8/Let The Flow Do the Work in our continuing march through the 14 Smart Placement principles. In 8, we look at the macro-layout in a work area and at its overall flow line. How would you describe that flow? Fluid? Stalled? Using the Could-Be/Dream Map to illuminate motion, we contemplate the placement of what’s easy-to-move and what needs approval before it can be re-located. If you are a regular listener, you know you are in the Land of Big Ideas (yellow post-its)—and they have to be considered carefully. Not handling Big Ideas correctly can cause your smart placement efforts to crash and burn. Do not confuse “I-driven” with open-handed permission. If you do, associates may get the mistaken notion that thinking of a BIG improvement idea is the same as doing it. This is not so. Listen and hear how to handle those decisions and keep the spirit of inventiveness and engagement alive.

This week on The Visual Workplace, we continue our march through the fourteen principles of Smart Placement. Last week, Gwendolyn Galsworth (your host and visual expert) walked us through the first four. Today, we are bound to pick up three or four more—maybe five: Principle 5/Put It On Wheels; Principle 6/Make It Ergonomically Sounds; and Principle 7/Make Function Appear & Disappear At Will. Those three conclude the basic set of easy-to-make changes on a micro-level. Then we move on to thinking that is more abstract and more conceptual, beginning with Principle 8/Let The Flow Do The Work. You will also learn more about how to maximize the use of the Could-Be Map that teams created to help them see, think, and re-envision the layout of function in their work areas. Listen as Gwendolyn tells you how to keep groups engaged and thinking and how to set up a Charge Chart that captures that thinking, without overpromising. Join us for another practical session of how-tos and what-ifs.

How do we get smart about the placement of function at work? If you’ve been listening to The Visual Workplace, you now have a growing understanding of the HOW and the WHY of that. This week, Gwendolyn Galsworth (your host and visual expert) continues to share the details of this core methodology—which she developed so operators could deploy higher dimensions of 5S and become more culturally aligned. This is where 5S and visual thinking begin their dance. After a quick review of the learning so far, hear the first four of the 14 Smart Placement Principles, principles that operators apply directly to their Could-Be or Dream Maps. Because these first four principles are simple, they get heads nodding and pave the way, gradually, to more complex considerations as value-add associates re-engineer the layout of function and create an accelerated flow of material, information and themselves into and through their work areas. Join us for an hour of practical, hands-on listening.

If employee ownership is crucial to continuous improvement (and who would deny that?), then what happens when people want to own their improvements too much? What do you do when hourly associates falsely assume their creativity guarantees their ideas will get deployed? How do you handle the outliers—people with innovative but un-popular improvement notions? And what happens when operators cannot agree amongst themselves on what is needed and why? How do you handle that? Do you step in and pull rank? Do you let associates “duke it out?” In this third show in her current Smart Placement series, Gwendolyn Galsworth (your host and visual expert) tackles these questions and shares her “Four People Process Tools” for getting people involved and managing the boundaries. In parallel, she completes the details started last week of the Smart Placement Mapping process, a core step in her 5S protocol for making borders meaningful. This is a LIVE show. Call-in comments and questions welcomed!

Question: On your way to the Visual Where, what do you do before laying down floor borders? Answer: You implement Smart Placement. This is a surprise step Gwendolyn Galsworth (your host and visual expert) discovered twenty-two years ago when her then-attempts at traditional 5S failed. Part of that failure, she realized, stemmed from people laying down lines that simply traced where workplace items were—instead of validating the current location of the functions those items represented or improving it. In response, she inserted a step before implementing borders: Smart Placement. This week in the second show in the series, Galsworth walks you, step by step, through Smart Placement mapping. She also emphasizes the need for trainers/coaches to do their own homework in advance while also preparing for messy people issues associated with new layouts. Listen and learn how to amplify and anchor your 5S in visual thinking and operator inventiveness. This is a LIVE show. Call-ins welcome!

Does the location of things at work matter? You bet! Finding that right location can accelerate the flow of work—or slow it to a standstill. This is the logic of Smart Placement and its formula: Function + Location = Flow. Over the next several shows, Gwendolyn Galsworth, your host and visual workplace expert, shares her Smart Placement approach—that indispensable step before laying down borders. Today, she defines the problem of placement that is not smart and shares a mapping tool so you/your teams can discover the level of motion (moving without working) in your area currently triggered by un-smart location—the un-conscious placement of function. Smart Placement doesn’t just show us where things are. It ensure that things are in the right place—not simply a designated location (as in “a place for everything/everything in its place”)—but the smart place for a function (item), its right location in relationship to every other function in the area. Tune in and learn more.

Why do the Sami people in the Arctic have 180 words for snow and nearly 1000 for reindeer? Because words matter. Words are different because different meanings are needed. In much the same way, it is important to question why we have so many different improvement approaches and to probe our assumptions about what we believe about why they are different. Our results will only be as good as that thinking. This week, Gwendolyn Galsworth (visual workplace expert and your host) takes us through the three remaining components of the BORG mind: Borg Quality, Borg Empowerment, and Borg Standardization. What happens when we buy the marketing and not the product? Or eat the packaging instead of the meat? What happens when we organize our improvement initiatives around mistaken beliefs and fuzzy hopes? Why can’t Six Sigma eradicate defects? Why is an empowerment mandate never enough? When does the pledge to standardization defeat long-lasting improvement solutions? Tune in and find out.

It is not the number of visual devices that transforms a company into a highly-functioning visual work environment. It is the power of those devices. That’s what separates watered-down, copycat devices from highly-effective visual solutions…and cosmetic visuality from authentic visual function. In this week’s episode, Gwendolyn Galsworth, visual workplace expert and your host, defines what visual devices are—and how to make them increasingly effective by applying the steps of visual power. Tune in and learn about visual indicators, visual signals, visual controls and visual guarantees (poka-yokes). See how the principles in these four power levels can turn any visual device into a performance driver—a mechanism that ensures the outcomes you require: safety, speed, flow, accuracy, and perfect quality. This is a two-episode show. Listen to both and learn what the four power levels are, how they function, and how you can create more powerful visual devices in your own company.

Why do so many 5S efforts get stalled? Why do so few get visual? On this show, your host Gwendolyn Galsworth (leading visual expert/award-winning author) begins a detailed discussion of her Ten Doorway framework—starting (of course) with Doorway 1: Visual Order-Visual Inventiveness. This is not just a re-hashing of traditional 5S, with a neat, clean, orderly work area as the outcome. In Galsworth’s approach that just gets us to the starting line. Her goal, by contrast, is robust, operator-led visuality that, in many companies, triggers a 15%-30% increase in productivity and a spirited, engaged, and aligned workforce on the value-add level. Because this process also liberates supervisors from deadly repetitive support tasks, they can instead become leaders of improvement. It will take Gwendolyn several shows to cover the main principles and practices of Doorway 1—that indispensable first step on your journey to a fully-functioning visual enterprise. Tune in. Get informed! Get inspired!

While many improvement leaders produce impressive, lasting results, some pursue their duties as though their minds have been taken over by aliens—or, as Gwendolyn Galsworth (visual workplace expert and your host) says it: by BORG, as in “resistance is futile.” BORG quality, BORG empowerment, and BORG standardization are topics of upcoming shows. Today she looks at “BORG cellular design.” When “5 Days & 4 Nights” arrived in the US from Toyota in 1986, it caused a revolution of speed, invention, and just do it change. In the 1990s, it morphed into the Kaizen Blitz and grabbed our national attention. We never looked back. But we should have. Why? Because since then, far too many companies (innocent and hopeful the Blitz was the new best way) did inadvertent harm to their companies and culture, even as flow distance and time shrank often by 80%? No one told them that Toyota confined the Blitz to its supply chain alone—and for good reason. Tune in today and hear the rest of the story.

Strange how most of us believe change happens. Strange how we believe companies learn and improve. Stranger yet is how we seek to validate the progress we think we’re making by attending to exact technical causes and the concrete logic of the physical. But what if an entirely different set of causes pertain and an all-but-undetectable logic produces these tangible, knowable outcomes? Suddenly reality ain’t what it used to be—or is supposed to be. This week on The Visual Workplace, your host and visual workplace expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, takes you into the world of chaos theory, fractals, and morphogenic fields, sharing research on how companies evolve and learning happens, based on the largest gap in understanding that exists: “what we don’t know we don’t know.” Tune in and you may be surprised to learn that even monkeys can point the way to what’s really going on when we learn, implement, and improve. This is a live show. Your call-in comments and questions are welcomed!

The world of work often seems to most closely resemble politics, with further polarization the method of choice for handling differences: Go to your corner and come out fighting. Though trendy, playing our differences against each other is not the only way. In this week’s show, your host and visual workplace expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, recounts the true story of Pro-Life and Pro-Choice groups doing the hard work of seeking and finding common ground. These polar opposites demonstrate the importance of our learning a new way and breaking the myth of either/or choices. No less so in the workplace. That process begins with an executive decision to invert the power pyramid and develop a new power proposition. Executives then learn a new way as do value-add associates. The result? Alignment and the simultaneous definition of areas of commonality and areas of enduring differences. In a word: unity. And throughout, managers and supervisors are caught in the middle. Tune in and learn more.

Who has not heard the discussion of employee empowerment begin with the well-worn top/down pyramid and its seeming opposite—the bottom/up pyramid? The question is not which of the two pyramids to reject but rather how do we blend the two into a single framework of excellence. In this week’s show, your host and visual workplace expert, Gwendolyn Galsworth, begins to map out that process and the new paradigm of governance and participation that results. At the heart of that paradigm is the re-distribution of power, beginning with the role of executive as leader and the need to identify, articulate, and drive the company’s vision, mission, values, strategy, systems, resources, and structure. This is the realm of the “what,” the “who,” and the “why.” Contrast this, Galsworth urges, with the bottom-up or empowerment pyramid with its steady value-add level focus on the “how”—operational execution. An effective work culture is perfect blending of the two. Tune in and learn more.