The role of information boards in production
A team information board is basically a visual platform through which a production team monitors its daily activity by displaying its objectives and results, identifying problems and planning actions to solve them.
In a production plant, regardless of the field, whether we are talking about automotive, electronics or others, a big challenge is aligning all employees with the company's objectives and priorities. Employees need to actually see what is happening, what is the performance of the teams they are part of and what are the real problems. And this is where the information board, whether physical or digital, comes to the help, a tool in visual and objective management in the field of Lean production.
This information board helps to:
- increase involvement and responsibility
- clearly see the strengths and what is not going well through the transparency of relevant information, thus quickly detecting problems
- align all team members to the same objectives
- develop a culture of continuous improvement
The most common practices for visualizing information are divided into several categories:
- team key performance indicators (KPI) – Output, Efficiency, Defect rate, OEE, etc.
- information about corrective actions – PDCA, A3, Action plan, etc.
- planning the production plan and possible priorities of the day
- useful information for the team: audit results, communications from management, work schedule calendar, etc.
But just displaying this information without a structured follow-up will not bring benefits, so a short daily meeting (10-15 min.), clear and to the point is recommended to review the previous day, confirm the day's plan and establish quick actions for any problems. Each team member must know how we are doing, what and how we have to do and what are the corrective and improvement actions.
The board is the image of the results obtained by the team and is useless if the problems are not visible, and improvement begins with transparency.
