The Visual Workplace: Shorten Those Shelves!

Most people around Lean have heard the term ‘visual workplace’. They know that it is the art of making problems leap out at you, and being able to have a process immediately communicate its status to an observer.

One barrier to creating an effective visual workplace is the practice of using tall shelves and workbenches. These structures, in effect, create walls between workers.

The benefits of lower shelves and workstations include:

1. Easier communication between team members. We talk about teamwork, and then build up a physical barrier between them that makes it impossible to work together.
2. More effective leadership. Leads and supervisors can watch what is going on their areas much more easily, and can go to help at the first sign of a problem.
3. Flow is far more observable. The first two sound important to the casual practitioner, but this one is my personal favorite. With work areas that are cordoned off by shelving, it is hard to track how parts and people move. The view of motion is disjointed as people, parts, and products duck in and out of sight.

When a workplace gets its height down, an observer can stand on a staircase at one end of a facility, and watch the choreography of the flow in a factory. It is an eye-opening experience to have an unobstructed view of an operation.