What is Workplace Visuality?

I asked Gwendolyn D. Galsworth, Ph.D. that question in a past podcast and received a rather in-depth answer. Considered by many a leading visual expert, Dr. Galsworth is the author of a number of books on organizational improvement and workplace visuality, including Visual Workplace/Visual Thinking, recipient of the Shingo Prize for Research. The rest of the podcast was nothing short of the same type of answers.

What is Workplace Visuality?

Gwendolyn D. Galsworth: Yes, I’d be happy to. Workplace Visuality is a term that was coined by a friend of mine at Rolls Royce. Workplace Visuality has to do with embedding information into the physical environment of work into the physical landscape of work, and this is vital information for work.

So the information is there at your fingertips, when and as you need it. You simply pull it form the environment the way that we pull information from the roadway when we travel along. We’re in a new city. We’re trying to find our way. We have a map.

We don’t have a GPS system; let’s just say that right now. Although that’s a very good visual system but let’s just say that that we’re depending on the roadway signs and the indicators and on the other devices, the stoplights, the speed bumps, to get us where we’re going on time and safely.

The information is built into that environment. We call that the value field, because when you’re driving, really the roadway is as you drive along you’re adding value. You’re doing your tasks, your accomplishing your goals.

It’s the same way in a work environment in a company of any kind; it could be a hospital, a factory, it could be a bank, and it could be a mine, an open pit mine. It’s a workplace. And there’s information that you need right now that you don’t want to go into a room or even into your computer to retrieve. You need it at the point of use. Really instantly so you can act upon that information. The visual workplace is about that.

This creates many, many business benefits and equally robust cultural benefits. The visual thinking part is that when you become a visual thinker, I discovered you have to really look at your physical work a different way. You have to look at it from the point of view of what information is missing that needs to be there. You have to notice this thing, this enemy I have named??I call it motion.

You have to notice your motion. It’s one of the seven deadly ways that Toyota gave us. But I chose motion, because it’s something that it’s physically attached to our body. Motion is defined by Toyota as “moving without working.”

So you’re moving. You’re getting the information you need. You’re getting the work order you’ve misplaced. You’re getting the supervisor you need. You’re getting the information in order to proceed, but you’re not actually doing the work. You’re getting the information you need to do your work, but it’s not yet work…

And visual thinking is about noticing that, noticing the information deficit, noticing your motion, and then taking the next step. This is to create visual devices that eliminate the information deficit, and therefore eliminate the motion that that deficit triggered. That’s visual thinking.

It has tremendous roll-up impact, because it is really living on micro level of transactions. These are micro transactions that we barely notice ourselves, let alone others. It just looks like busyness. So that’s what it is.

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