Walk into almost any factory, hospital, office, or warehouse and you'll likely encounter tier boards with a familiar set of colors: green, yellow, and red. Green means good. Red means bad. And yellow? Well...has some issues.
I began thinking about this after a discussion with my good friend and Lean thought leader Billy Ray Taylor. Billy is a crusader against the color yellow in visual management. His position is surprisingly simple: there is no such thing as 'almost standard.' A process is either operating to standard or it isn't. Green means standard. Red means off standard. Everything else, he argues, is an invitation to debate.
At first, I wasn't convinced. Like many Lean practitioners, I've spent years seeing yellow used as an intermediate condition. While working at a factory recently with Billy, I even found myself defending it. 'If they're getting close to the goal,' I suggested, 'why not make the metric yellow? It might encourage the team to push just a little harder to get to green.' Billy smiled before replying, 'Or yellow becomes the new green.' The room became quiet. His point was simple but profound. Once people begin viewing yellow as acceptable, they stop striving for green. What was intended as encouragement quietly becomes permission. Before long, people aren't asking, 'How do we get back to standard?' They're asking, 'Isn’t yellow good enough?
The more I reflected on that conversation, the more I realized yellow has an identity problem. Ask ten people what yellow means and depending upon context, you'll likely hear many different answers. Here are a few:
Lines on the floor to note the standard location for a forklift or a safe lane for walking
Amber Andon lights to indicate that assistance is needed before a problem is escalated
A yellow traffic signal meaning slow down and proceed with caution; unless you're the driver who interprets it as a signal to accelerate before the light turns red.
OSHA and ANSI standard color to highlight physical hazards.
Lean Daily Management Boards to signal that a process is near to but not at standard. For this last example: Green is easy: On target. Red is clear: Not on target. To the question of “target versus actual however,” Yellow is open to interpretation. Does it mean not quite red or not quite green? Or maybe, almost . Yellow may simply mean “good enough for now.” The answer is no longer clear at a glance. In Billy’s words, if we can learn to ‘celebrate the red’ as an opportunity to problem solve, then Yellow is not needed.
What does yellow mean on your tier boards? More importantly, what action does it trigger?
O.L.D.
BTW: The LinkedXL Team will be joining us on September 29-30 in Springfield, MA at the upcoming Northeast Lean Conference. They’ll be hosting two complementary sessions, one on the fundamental LinkedXL approach to lean daily management and one to share the unique LinkedXL-OS operating system. Workshop attendees receive a six-week trial sandbox.