A visual factory is a manufacturing center that’s full of graphical information. All of these images must be bright, clear, coherent, easy to read and strategically placed.
In a visual factory, you can just glance up or look around you, and you instantly know what to do, where to go, where to find certain items or which safety rules to follow. As a result, the entire plant is more organized and more productive.
But how do you set up an effective visual factory? Well, let’s take a look at the main elements you’ll need.
Signs
To start with, you could hang several large signs from the ceiling to identify the primary sections of your factory. Wall signs, meanwhile, can name smaller areas and specific aisles.
In addition, signs can tell people what’s inside various containers and what’s moving through various pipes. That’s especially important for hazardous materials.
You can also attach signs to your vehicles. That way, employees will know which vehicles belong to which divisions, eliminating confusion.
Colors
Using color schemes to identify and differentiate products, operations, machines, teams or any other criteria, can be an easy way to introduce a visual aid for your team. It will reduce the probability of error and improve efficiency.
At Prodsmart we have implemented the possibility of adding colors to products and you can read this article on why and how you should adapt this new feature.
Labels and Stickers
When every object in your factory is in a labeled storage compartment, people can always find things. Just as crucial, they can always return them to their rightful places.
For their part, floor stickers are really helpful. They might be a series of arrows marking safe routes to take. When everyone follows set paths, it reduces bottlenecks, allowing a better flow of people and materials.
Floor stickers can also designate parking spaces for forklifts, and they can warn people to stay away from danger zones.
Display Boards
An electronic display board with LED lighting is a unique and versatile communications tool. Position these boards high up so everyone can check them out now and then.
Display boards supply frequent status reports, letting people know when deliveries will arrive, who’s working which shift and who’s assigned which tasks. They offer alerts about production snags and technical difficulties. And they can keep running tallies of how many products have been made during the past day, week or month.
If there were ever an emergency, an alarm could sound, and your display boards could tell everyone what was going on.
These boards can even be used for fun purposes — announcing whose birthday it is, for instance.
Of course, digital boards are only as reliable as the software programs that manage them. That’s why Prodsmart manufacturing execution software makes it simple to keep tabs on every aspect of your production and has visual, simple and intuitive dashboards that you can show. These programs accurately track products and analyze relevant data so you can always give the right info and instructions to your staff.
With these sophisticated tools at your side, your visual factory will be as smooth and efficient as it could possibly be.
To learn more on how to count on Prodsmart to create a Visual factory, sign up and start our free trial.
