The Visual Factory: Building Participation Through Shared Information

Michael Greif has written this book based on a deep insight in chemistry between people working within a factory. This insight is based on his experience that visual communication can be a benefit or be a disaster! So read this book before you start some guru-communication-show in your plant. Already in his foreword he clearly mentions: 'every company that introduced visual communication was also pursuing significant changes in its modes of management and organization.' Reading this book will take much time. The essential parts of his book are not so visual and the photo's/drawings are a little bit oldfashioned now. But the content is very strong: how to build a 'village-community' within your factory with entrepreneurial thinking of all co-operators and sustained by visual communication. Do not expect a book with visual examples that you simply can copy-paste. If you expect this, you better buy a other book. But if you want to invent your own communication-style based on your mission / targets then dig into this book and you will learn/understand how to do it.

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.

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.

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!!