Engineering Scheduling Using Visual Management with Daily Huddles

Abstract

The problem at Bosch Packaging was the priority of engineering effort placed on the execution of customer orders. Continuous improvement efforts were often not executed in a timely manner causing many design errors to be released into manufacturing and assembly. The process of visual management and daily supervisor huddles was implemented to manage all tasks that entered the engineering department. Every task was documented on a kanban card. Tasks were prioritized and assigned or placed in the parking lot on the kanban board. The supervisors and manger reviewed every task request entering the department each day. All metrics tracked by this study showed improvement. The data collected and analyzed shows engineering hours applied to customer orders versus continuous improvement tasks improved by 6.4%. Hours applied to managed projects versus unmanaged increased by 31.8%. A reduction of 20 hours in the standard deviation of individual engineer’s total annual hours shows an improvement in the distribution of work across the department. A 10% reduction of parts added to customer orders after engineering release and a 30% reduction in internal failure costs gave a clear indication of the positive effect of daily supervisor huddles and visual management on the organization.