The Visual Factory: Building Participation Through Shared Information (See What's Happening in Your Key Processes--At a Glance, All) (Hardcover)

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Editorial Reviews

Review

"Competitive factories of tomorrow must rely on the knowledge and experiences of everyone, including production workers. The Visual Factory does an excellent job of introducing the concepts of visual factories as well as providing a guideline for implementing them. The industry examples were especially helpful." -- Dan Blount, Engineering Manager, Hewlett Packard

Does an excellent job of introducing the concepts of visual factories as well as providing a guideline for implementing them.

Dan Blount, Engineering Manager, Hewlett Packard 06/01/04

Product Description

If you're aware of the tremendous improvements achieved in productivity and quality as a result of employee involvement, then you'll appreciate the great value of creating a visual factory. This book shows how visual management can make the factory a place where workers and supervisors freely communicate and take improvement action. It details how to develop meeting and communication areas, communicate work standards and instructions, use visual production controls such as kanban, and make goals and progress visible. Includes more than 200 diagrams and photos.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 320 pages
• Publisher: Productivity Press; 1 edition (February 1, 1991)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0915299674
• ISBN-13: 978-0915299676
• Product Dimensions: 8.9 x 6.2 x 1.1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.4 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon.com Sales Rank: #192,289 in Books (See Bestsellers in Books)

Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

10 of 10 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars A Way to Improve Quality & Productivity, January 15, 2002

By	Sawsan Bouresly (Kuwait) - See all my reviews

I think this easy to read book is a must for all the industry sectors. It illustrates visual management (or visual communication; VC) as a very important issue to boosting the factorys' or companys' productivity through increasing the effectiveness of the employees' from head management to the shop floor workers by the effective sharing of information and by encouraging the workers to participate in developing these information. In addition; VC helps in building a sense of belonging to the factory or company within the workers themselves which will work in the factory (company) best interest.

The book introduces guide lines for applying the VC. I think that the real cases covered along with the many different graphs and pictures really helped in clearing out many points.

8 of 8 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars The beginnings of Lean in the west?, November 9, 2004

By	S. Jantzen (North America) - See all my reviews (REAL NAME)

Michael Greif has written a book on lean principles long before the MIT study resulted in "The Machine the Changed the World".

The foundation of lean is generally agreed to be the 5Ss, kaizen, and visual communication. This book, while focused on VC, does adequately cover the others. Consider this... the book was written in the late 80's, when Lean Manufacturing as a term had not yet been coined.

And now, the review... this is an excellent study on visual communication. Although limited in scope (most practical examples were of western European factories), it is a study that should not be limited to factories; rather, one that has application in many aspects of daily life.

Practical examples, diagrams, drawings, and checklists abound. Definitely user-friendly, and as the subject matter demands, visually communicative.

17 of 20 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars I own 33 copies and use it as a text for day-long workshops., March 28, 1998

By	[e-mail] (Grand Rapids, Michigan) - See all my reviews

This is a very readable and credible work. Chapter six on visual process indicators is my favorite. It was an a-ha moment for me!!