Letting value-add associates own the improvement outcome I call the visual where is a big step forward for most companies. But, as we have been discussing over the past two issues of The Visual Thinker, the impact of this can--and should--be more than a genuine opportunity for employee engagement. First we saw that operator-led visuality can be used as a lever to redefine the precious resource--time--by separating it into time for production and time for improvement. Second, the company can seize the opportunity of value-add level visuality by using it to build the power of operators to think and create. Operators become self-leaders--self-regulating because the workplace has become self-explaining. The following third outcome links so closely to that that we could say the empowerment of the hourly workforce causes it--supervisors and team leads are freed up to carve out a new role for themselves.

Outcome 3. Supervisors Become Leaders of Improvement

Billionaire Ross Perot said it perfectly: "Inventories can be managed. People must be led." The process of cultivating operator-led visuality provides important opportunities for supervisors to gradually transform themselves into improvement leaders, beginning with improvement coaches. This happens when a new working relationship is forged between a visual workplace trainer and area supervisors related to the visual workplace blitz-the visual blitz, for short.