Some Data Has More Value

Identify and communicate the benefits of real time visual measures.

Practitioners: tactical, integrative, and strategic

The first idea that surfaces for me when I read this statement is ‘many of our measures today are proxies’. Many of our measures are only representative of what is happening. This statement upsets a lot of people, but when I realized it’s truth, I paid a lot closer attention to the gap between the measurement and what was happening in real time. Some data has more value than others.

The second thought that surfaces is visual management. The simplest statement I can recall regarding visual managements objective is the visual evaluation of what is happening in real time. Visual management tells anyone the story of what is happening in the moment, in a single glance. Over simplified? Sure. Directionally beneficial. Absolutely. I am drawn to the categories of measurement I was trained to use, S – Q – D – P, safety, quality, delivery, and productivity.

With Industry 4.0 and IoT and Digital Twin and all the other concepts associated with the digitalization of work and life, we have an abundance of data available. The challenge is understanding what is important and what is a distraction.

The data is becoming more and more available. One of my long-term strategic partners, SMS Think Tank, has long supported the idea of process before system. Their work in MBSE (model-based systems engineering) and Digital Twins goes hand in hand with operational excellence. It isn’t about having data, it is about having the right data and knowing its value within the system. Now we have all the pieces to make sense of this concept.

Some Data Has More Value

The process owners and process teams need a way to communicate the most important information regarding their shared purpose. My objective, as a process owner, is always to provide the team with what they need to be successful in their work. They should never be without anything they need to do their work.

A real time visual management system communicates what the process team want a process owner to know, and what the process owner wants the process team to know, in real time. The most important information the process team needs can be just as important to the decision-making processes they use. These measures always fall into the four performance categories: S, Q, D, P.