Visual Supply Chain Metrics

Following on from our previous post on Supply Chain metrics it’s worth discussing the use of visual metrics in the workplace.

In today’s age of modern computer systems and technology it’s surprising sometimes to see how few organisations have a handle on how their business is doing – it’s all the more surprising to see the affect this has on desk level operatives such as buyers or warehouse staff.

It’s not radical to assume that if people don’t have clear objectives and are knowledgable about how the business is performing that they’ll continue to work as they always do.

So how do you compensate for this – well one area that we recommend to our clients is that the business grasps the use of visual management and information sharing with both hands, performance management should become part of the organisational culture. There are a variety of methods in doing this.

The more technically savy organisations may make this “business intelligence” part of their organisations intranet – encorporating hierachical views of the companies data and measuring this against set targets. Some businesses take the step of consolidating this data and emailing it out as a monthly brief to all staff. How it’s presented isn’t necessarily too important the ability for staff to tap into the management reports is though.

One other common method is the use of management boards – we deploy these in some organisations and they tend to be localised (to specific departments). We just use common garden white boards where we fix the monthly management reports to. We then run short (but sharp) management briefings with staff regularly (we run a 15 minute business brief on a Monday) to discuss the organisations performance (eg, output figures, performance against budget etc) and the coming targets for the week.

Where the business is underperforming these sessions represent an ideal time to discuss how the situation can be righted – we run in parallel to the reports and actions list where we list owners and actions of specific tasks that have been generated by the Visual Supply Chain Metrics. Our “management white board” is just past the entrance to the office – you can’t miss it and it’s visible too all. The key output from this is that everyone shares in the departments performance and everyone knows the departmental objectives.

The old adage “you can’t manage what you can’t see” is truer now than it’s ever been – sure Supply Chain metrics are important – they help you see what’s happening – but it doesn’t stop there – so many business produce a Business Intelligence monthly pack and then file it away!

When it comes to supply chain metrics we say!

• Display them
• Share them across departments (be proud of your performance)
• Discuss them
• Review them