One difference between traditional culture and continuous improvement is the focus on the things that matter most. Another difference is that we want to make problems visible. A daily management system supports both things by using gemba walks, daily meetings, and leader-standard work. Daily meetings are the place to discuss progress and actions while keeping everybody aligned with the site KPI’s. The use of visual display boards during the daily meeting is how this alignment occurs during the accountability portion.
What is the daily meeting accountability process?
A daily stand-up meeting with the team is one of the fundamental activities of the daily management system. However, the huddle meeting is not complete unless it has a visual review of the critical objectives. The daily accountability process is the way to involve everybody in the organization to check progress and further action needed to close the gaps.
This process is done through daily meetings at different levels. These tier meetings typically occur at two or three different levels, depending on the size of the business. Tier 1 is between the team leader and team members, and tier 2 is between the supervisor and team leaders. A manager leads Tier 3 with the participation of a group of supervisors. These gatherings help the team to keep the focus on the performance of the daily process. Also, it makes visible the effect of their actions on the site metrics, which drive accountability.
We use a visual management system to track those metrics. During the meeting, the discussion is around the results presented on the board. During the conversation, we seek to answer two questions. What we did well? and what could we have done better?
What should be part of the visual display boards during the daily meeting?
Every company goal must have a metric to measure progress. Usually, what we use at the top leadership level does not make sense for the office or shop floor people. Therefore, they must be cascade to the team as a metric that they understand. That way the metrics, are aligned with the KPIs.
The board should be easy to understand by the people working in the area. Everybody should know the meaning of each metric. Also, they should know how their work affects the performance measured by each one. The board should provide information to know when the process is out of range. That way, they can see how yesterday’s actions affect performance.
The purpose of the visual display boards during the daily meeting
The meeting must be a safe place to discuss the problems, reasons, and possible solutions. It is the leadership’s responsibility to ensure that it is that way. While it is not the place for long problem-solving sessions, the group should agree on what actions to take.
When the design is correct, a visual system will help see what should happen and what happened. The objective is to understand what happened and create the appropriate actions to correct the deviation from the target.
While reviewing the KPI’s, people should understand the results and the gap with the target. Understanding what went well or not helps to learn the source of concerns and frustrations. After this step, the conversation should focus on taking action to solve the daily problems. When problems are too big to solve, capture the ideas for further discussion during kaizen events.
The goal of these tier meetings is to foster a collaborative environment for problem-solving, ideas sharing, communication, and learning.  The daily meeting is where we see problems and take action to make improvements every day.  The spirit of continuous improvement is making small improvements every day, everywhere, by everybody.   Live up to it by using the morning meetings and display boards to drive improvements!
