A Standardization Methodology for Visual Management in Lean Supply Chain Environments

A rather important tool of Lean used in a plant is Visual Management, because people pay more attention to everything that is visual than any other sense. This kind of eyes management allows the abnormalities to stand out and simplify the work that needs to be done. Visual Management within an organization, assumes that all the tools used in the plant are standard, to be the same in the rest of the organization. In order to help organizations about the develop of visual standards, the author proposed to develop a Standardization Methodology divided in two sections, the Current Situation Analysis Methodology and a Future Design Methodology. The first one refers to all stages that precede the analysis of instruments of some plants, while the second one concerns the creation of improvements. The enhancement proposals were focused on processes that could be an advantage to the existence of a standard tool. Most of these tools are low cost of employment and there are some advantages in their use: they allow more transparency on processes and they make the shop floors look like cities.