Metrics for performance: measuring accelerates improvement

In manufacturing, visualization of problems is common. Highlighting the problem as a metric draws attention and improvement is accelerated. For example, the effectiveness of this method has been proven in firms that produce high quality products.

However, visualization is often not practiced in non-manufacturing, office areas. The burden seems to be in analyzing the work process and in determining the correct improvement metric. The real reason, though, may be that white collar workers do not want to be monitored for work efficiency.

In these workplaces, efficiency enhancements tend to be slow, along with the discovery of the problem causes.