One of the important tools in Lean Management is Daily Management. Daily management is achieved using a visual dashboard. The dashboard can be manually prepared, printed and presented or even electronically published each day to share progress with all involved stakeholders and participants.

Daily Management visual dashboard is used to track and monitor progress of key performance indicators, targets and goals that are important for the organization. It is used on especially those areas where impact is high and the team needs to ensure that they do not slip agreed targets. It is also used to quickly identify and visualize areas of attention and issues that must be resolved to achieve the targets.

Daily Management helps in comparing performance improvements on daily basis at a glance look. It shows the areas with colors to bring attention (E.g., red could mean target is not achieved, green means target achieved and on track, orange or yellow means target will be achieved with in agreed threshold of some %).

Daily management needs standardized processes, templates and possibly automated systems to generate and share daily progress at a specific time each day. It requires efforts and commitment from the organization stakeholders and key team players, to ensure they stick to the cadence and review progress each day.

Over a period of time, it becomes a habit and when it’s done well, it helps in ensuring key targets are achieved and exceeded across the organization. Lean prescribes some standards on how daily management should be done to achieve efficient results.

Daily Management (DM) Process

Daily management consists of four areas that must be done. These four areas help to check and understand how the organization is progressing and which areas need attention to keep on track. Here are the four areas,

1. Daily Accountability Process Meeting – The daily accountability process meeting is arranged to visualize progress and identify areas of concerns as well as run through the issues and actions.

In the meeting a check is done to ensure everyone on the team has everything they need to perform and achieve that day’s targets. It also allows people to speak up and ask for help wherever they need attention and help from the team and senior stakeholders.

The DM (Daily Management) visual dashboard used is to track the overall targets and attention areas. The DM board also captures key issues and actions on a daily basis. The DM boards can be automated to save repetitive efforts and a big TV screen can be used to visualize tracking of KPIs and review of issues and actions.

Daily Accountability Process (DAP) meeting helps the participants visualize the entire progress transparently, collaborate and brainstorm together.

The meeting is a stand-up meeting as it is supposed to be a quick review of 15 to 30 minutes followed by next steps of actions.

2. Leader Standard Work – Leader standard work is set of work culture and behaviors that the lean leaders must adhere. Lean leaders are tasked to ensure every member of the team contributes to best of their abilities in achieving the results.

Part of the work is also to ensure Lean standards and ways of working are followed by all team members. Leaders check the progress on daily basis to ensure ways of working are modelled and used by all.

In case of gaps or issues found in ways of working, Lean leaders coach and train the members to lift them up and bring them back on track.

3. Gemba Walks – Gemba walks are attached to going to place where the work is done and action is ongoing. Gemba walks are done to places where its important to check and seek opportunities for improvements to become more efficient and effective in delivering superior value to the customer.

Lean leaders and drivers take the gemba walk to observe how the processes are functioning in real life on the ground Vs how they are being presented. The insights help them think about better ways to do things as well as identify best practices that can be applied to other parts of the organization.

4. Process Confirmation – Best on the observations from the Gemba walk, the team can confirm if the process is working as defined or they see variations of it and need for improvements.

The process confirmation can be also be done as period internal or external audits without notice to check and confirm that standard operating procedures (SOPs) are fully adhered to as well as Segregation of duties are well maintained as per defined roles not allowing conflicting roles managing tasks or stages that they are not supposed to manage.

This results in ensuring the entire organization functions as per defined as well as fully adheres to process changes and standards.

Daily Management (DM) Board

The DM Board can be designed to have KPIs that matter most for the organization as well as department or division (level) at which the DM board is prepared. There is no point having top level or even region level KPIs on the department’s DM board if those are not actioned and in control of the team members. The KPIs used for tracking must be meaningful and in control of all the team members.

The DM board can have or look for KPIs from SQDCP areas(Safety, Quality, Delivery, Cost, and People). The DM board must be placed near to the work area where all team members and stakeholders can easily look at it. This will ensure the board is kept latest and remains on everybody’s mind for regular review and actions. It will improve collaboration and discussions amongst team members to help each other with new ideas on making things easier and efficient for all.

Let’s understand how the DM board can be arranged for effectiveness and efficiency.

1.     In the DM board SQDCP areas always have 31 short cells representing 31 days of the month.

2.     In case of weekly DM board, each cell can be representing the weeks and in such case 52 cells will be required to track weekly hit or miss of respective targets.

3.     The cells can be filled with Red, Green, Orange/Yellow and Grey colors.

a.     Red means the target is missed for that day and generally there will be an issue reflected in the board under issues section.

b.     Green means the target is achieved and everything is on track.

c.     Orange/Yellow can be used to show is target is missed but still within defined threshold and controllable to get it back on track.

d.     Grey can be used for non-working days or for days that are extra in the month (e.g. if Sep is 30 days, 31st cell will be in grey color).

4.     The issues occurred for red cells are discussed in the Daily Stand up meeting and action(s) are assigned to ensure those issues are resolved and does not repeat.

5.     It is not mandatory to place all the SQDCP areas on the board. The team can select only those they need to track depending on mutual agreement and alignment with stakeholders.

6.     The SQDCP areas can be also arranged flexibly (e.g., PCDQS or SQCDP etc.) based on the organization, department or division’s priority focus areas.

7.     There are other areas that can added as well for tracking, E.g., Inventory (I), Productivity (P), Bugs (B), Environment (E), Tickets (T) etc. This means the letters can KPIs to track for hit or miss are flexible as per team needs.

8.     Here are two examples of the SQDCP DM board. One example is using simple excel or white board based template while the other is a fully automated online dashboard.

a.     Excel or white board Based Tracking Dashboardb.

b.     Fully Automated Tracking Dashboard

Benefits of Daily Management

Let’s understand the benefits of using Lean, Daily Management and Visual Dashboards,

1.     Visualize the progress of important targets and KPIs on daily or weekly basis, at glance with in few minutes.

2.     Visualize the issues faced by the team in respective key performance areas within few minutes.

3.     Understand actions taken by the team, action owners and by when the issue will be resolved to bring the team back on track.

4.     Improved transparency and empowerment as the DM boards are maintained by the team members and bring full transparency to the team on progress made as well as issues faced.

5.     Team collaboration improves as team members discuss, brainstorm and come up with new ideas to get things done and achieve targets.

6.     Lean and Daily management culture gets embedded in every one’s way of working leading to significant improvements and

7.     Full compliance on regulatory audits as entire team follows and complies with the standardized operating procedures.

8.     Customer experience and value increases as the team continuously improves.

Lean Daily Management and Visual Dashboard helps organizations achieve and exceed their targets swiftly as everyone in the team thrives to do the best by adhering to Lean ways of working.