What is Visual Management?

In general, there appears to be a lack of terminology and the absence of an explicit definition of Visual Management (Tezel, 2011). Bell & Davison (2012) identify the difficulty in defining and understanding the “Visual” as a reason for the slow response to the “Visual turn” in the field of management studies research. Bell & Davison (2012) broadly define “the Visual” to encompass a variety of forms, including pictures, graphs, film, web pages and architecture and considers how recognition is growing of these forms in management research as a counterweight to the linguistic form (where language constitutes meaning and reality). Further definitions and explanations of Visual Management are to be found in the literature and are presented in this section.

 Greif (1991) describes Visual management as an orientation towards visual control in production, quality and workplace organisation. The goal is to render the standard to be applied and a deviation from it immediately recognisable by anybody (Greif, 1991).

 According to Liker (1997), Visual Management enhances communication by making information easily accessible in a production setting.

 Ho & Cicmil (1996), refer to Visual Management as using visual aids to improve processes and communication and promote continuous improvement (Ho & Cicmil, 1996).

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 Imai (1997) describes Visual Management as a way to help workers and supervisors to control and improve the workplace: “It makes abnormalities visible to all employees – managers, supervisors, employees, so that corrective action can begin at once” (Imai, 1997, p. 96).

 Tomkins & Smith (1998, p. 17) refer to Visual Management in terms of being part of the performance measurement system: “A communication and information centre for all employees to understand an organisation‘s strategic directions, performance (scoreboard) and the process of improving performance.

 Visual Management improves the availability of information, which also helps to reduce work interruptions (Chua et al., 1999).

 Koskela (2001, p. 5) refers to Visual Management as “a sheer embodiment of management-as-organising”. The Toyota Production System (Section 2.2) is essentially based on an approach known as “management-as-organising” where it is assumed that human activity is inherently situated, i.e. a response to the situation in question. Thus, the structured nature of the environment may contribute to purposeful acting. In contrast, conventional production management is based on an approach to management called management-as-planning (Johnston, 1995) (Section 2.7.1), where the central assumption is that intentional activity is based on a representation of the world. Thus, management is essentially about planning, i.e. manipulation of that representation. Koskela (2001) argues that the structuring of environment in the Toyota Production System aims at making the productive situation transparent and practices visible. Production managers become enablers through Visual Management by using visual communication for increased autonomy in practice.

 Liff & Posey (2004) refer to Visual management as a system for organisational improvement that aligns organisational vision, core values, goals and culture with other management systems, by means of stimuli (information), which directly address one of the five main senses: sight, hearing, feeling, smell and taste. Visual

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Management does not only refer to the ability to see, but also all of the other core senses.

 Pries (2003, p.92) defines Visual Management as “the goal of making the performance of each work team in each work area transparent, as well as visualising the standardised operations and processes”. The author explains Visual Management through its role in performance and process management. Pries (2003) claims that Visual Management is one of the superior production principles.

 In a later work, Koskela et al. (2007), refers to Visual Management as a management strategy that leads to the realisation of a visual workplace and also as “an attempt” to externalise, not only the plan of work, but also the required competence” (Koskela et al., 2007, p.8).

 Tezel (2011) refers to Visual Management as taking part in various managerial efforts in different ways and degrees, providing people with relevant information they need in a correct, easy way to understand and timely fashion, by using visual (sensory) communication (Tezel, 2011, p. 21).

It can be derived from the explanations and definitions of Visual Management presented in this section that an important goal of Visual Management application is to make information easily accessible so that process participants can act in a purposeful way (Liker, 1997; Imai, 1997; Tomkins & Smith, 1997; Chua et al., 1999; Koskela, 2001). Galsworth (2005) also reflects this view by noting that Visual Management can be applied to help answer the six fundamental questions in a workplace which is what, how many, who, when, how and where (Galsworth, 2005, p.34-35).The answers to these questions provide the necessary information that is needed to carry out work on a daily basis and to make effective decisions. Acting purposefully and effective decision making is particularly important in an industry such as construction where market forces (increased competition, increased design and construction, partnering between owners, contractors and suppliers, emphasis on innovation and research and development) shape the structure of the industry (Ahmad & Sein, 1997).

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In conclusion, while various different definitions and explanations of Visual Management exist in the literature, it can viewed as a management strategy for organisational control, measurement and improvement which uses visual aids to externalise information and improve communication in the workplace by creating transparency. The working definition of Visual Management used for this research is that of Ho & Cicmil (1996): Visual Management uses visual aids to improve processes and communication and promote continuous improvement.

The following section presents important concepts when applying Visual Management and discusses how Visual Management is applied to construction today.