Desencadenantes

According to Kattman, Corbin, Moore, and Walsh (2012) the term ‘visual workplace’ is relatively new. Creating a visual workplace does something more than quantify a lean enterprise; it adds a sense of sustainability to the workplace strengthening the

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organisation holistically (Galsworth, 2005). Sustainability becomes deeply rooted in visual’s ability to engage employees in their quest for creativity, balance and functionality of their own workspace. This happens by prompting employees to feel more a part of the organisation by crafting their own visual workplace devices, resulting in a sense of ownership. This is in conjunction with Alexander’s (2003) theory that employees need to embrace their individual workplace. Creating a visual workplace is fundamental in making this happen.

The research embraces Dr. Gwendolyn Galsworth’s (2005) theory that a visual workplace brings stability to the built environment, eliminating wasted efforts, introducing an unspoken organized workplace that enables employees to contribute to visual solutions enhancing their own workplace through visual thinking. Dr. Galsworth’s research defines a visual workplace as follows (Galsworth, 2005, p.10; Vinas, 2006):

“A visual workplace is self-ordering, self-explaining, self-regulating, and self- improving work environment-where what is supposed to happen does happen, on time, every time, day or night-because of visual solutions.”

The primary function of a visual workplace is to “ensure that what is supposed to happen

does happen” (Galsworth, 2011, p.6). In a visual workplace environment the information needed to do the assigned task presents itself through visual devices. This is achieved through visual material of vital information needed to make a value added contribution to the organisation. Galsworth (2005) contends that the visual workplace creates a language, a vocabulary of visuality that eliminates barriers, and envelops sustainable improvement initiatives forming a visual order, the foundation of a lean visual enterprise.

A visual workplace is desirable when there are too many questions asked by employees. Most of the time their questions will go unasked and unanswered. This can create budget, scheduling, quality and safety issues. Galsworth (2005) contends that creating visual thinking empowers employees to think more individually and develop instantiations that improve working conditions, hence creating visual workplaces. This is what Galsworth (2005, p.27) considers the “I-Driven Approach” to workplace visuality. The visual “I- Driven Approach” (Galsworth, 2005, p.27) provides transparency in the workplace encouraging employees, and employers to become visual thinkers. This converts

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employees in to ‘value add employees’ (Galsworth, 2005). Visual thinkers should consider the following questions (Galsworth, 2005, p.23-24, p.27):

What do I need to know? and What do I need to share?

The first question: “What do I need to know?” (Galsworth, 2005, p.23), gets answered as the value add employee reviews their workload for the day. They look for the right tools that will make them more efficient and provide a safer working environment. An example would be where things are located, how to retrieve the correct information, who do they deliver information to, and who needs to know what (Galsworth, 2005). There are no right or wrong questions and answers. The questions are unique to one’s job task, company, and work environment. Galsworth (2005) refers to value add employees as hourly paid employees.

The second question: “What do I need to share?” (Galsworth, 2005, p.24), corresponds to what information needs to be shared amongst co-workers, supervisors and managers in order for everyone to work in a more informed cohesive unit (Galsworth, 2005). There are specific questions that a supervisor may need to ask in regards to budgets, contracts, schedules and employee benefits, such as paid time off, vacation days, and job activities. In turn this creates a more collaborative transparent working environment where everyone has all the answers visually in front of them. Additionally, as employees organize their own workspace, and create visual devises, they become proud of their surroundings and transpire to be better visual communicators.

It can be argued that visual is about information and people, targeting waste at the workplace level, answering employee’s questions in a visual format. The technologies of a visual workplace translate inefficiencies into visual artefacts that are spread throughout the built environment, enabling people to benchmark systems establishing key performance indicators (KPI’s) (Liff & Posey, 2004; Galsworth, 2005). In the case of a service industry such as facilities management, establishing visual artefacts, service level agreements, and performance measurements aid in benchmarking department systems and strategic initiatives.

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These previous sections: visual workplace management system, visuality, visual communications and visual workplace management can be surmised into a house of

visual workplace management. Developing a visual workplace management system in an organisation will increase employee knowledge developing a learning culture shift

where employees want to discover more about lean and visual management technologies. They want to share the knowledge by mentoring each other and co-creating visual artefacts in the workplace.

Think in terms of building a residential house, you start from the ground up. The footings are formed and concrete is poured. The footing is visuality which supports the foundation, visual communications. Followed bythe exterior walls (leanprinciples and concepts) and interior walls (visual management) that structurally supports the building and roofing system. The roof becomes the overall visual workplace management system, encompassing all the approaches, technologies, and tools protecting the workplace from external elements. This is further illustrated in Figure 6.

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The interior walls, floor boards are made up of three levels of visual technologies. Level one is visual displays, performance metrics and standard technologies. This includes performance standards such as visual A-3 reports, SWOT analysis, SMART, and balance scorecards. Standard workplace practices such as processes and procedures, monthly performance reports, key performance indicators and service level agreements are injected in to the system along with visual display boards to communicate workplace performance standards and metrics. The second level is visual order, establishing visual foundation technologies. Composed of the 5S organisation declutter system, customer specifications and requirements, finding patterns in the workplace and visual safety solutions. The third level is visual controls, visual office, machines and guarantees technologies. This is made up of kanban systems, Heijunka boxes, pull systems, colour light controls, design to task and poka-yoke systems, computers, CAFM and CMMS systems, tablets, office telephones and smart phones.

Similar to developing a lean organisation, whereas lean is the philosophy and value, value stream, visual management, learning organisation, elimination of waste and just in time (JIT) are tools and techniques of a lean enterprise. The interpretation, challenge and depth of creating a lean visual management workplace provides organisations a chance to create their own bespoke visual workplace environment. This makes for an enriching occurrence and more opportunity to research visual management integration in facilities management systems. An in-depth literature evaluation concludes that their lacks publications and research explorations of a standard visual workplace management system especially in FM. The next section explores FM sectors more in depth to find evidence of lean and visual management in facilities management systems, does it exist, or is it more infrequent than imagined.