Visual Workplace, Visual Thinking: Creating Enterprise Excellence Through the Technologies of the Visual Workplace

This Shingo Award winning book is written for executives, managers, supervisors, team leaders, and coaches, providing a robust discussion of visual principles and practices, based on 30 years of field work by the author, Dr. Gwendolyn Galsworth. As world-renowned author Richard Schonberger writes: "In this book Galsworth, the foremost visual workplace authority, raises the stature of visuality, hardens soft notions about it, and embeds it in structure and theory." The goal of the book is to establish visual thinking as a foremost methodology for continuous improvement, and how to attain this by creating a workforce of visual thinkers. Over 200 full-color images and examples are shared. The first section of the book targets the basic concepts of visual information sharing, the use of visuality as a common language, and the Eight Building Blocks of Visual Thinking. Section 2 focuses on the culture of work: the role of executives, the leadership paradigm, and the empowerment inversion that results in a deeply engaged, spirited, inventive, and aligned workforce. Sections 3 and 4 map out the Ten Doorways of a Visual Workplace: visual order, visual standards, displays, visual metrics, visual problem solving, visual leadership, visual controls, visual pull systems, and visual guarantees (poka-yoke devices). In the final chapter, Galsworth discusses the visual and lean paradigms and how to bring them into the alignment needed to achieve operational excellence and make it sustainable.

Gwendolyn D. Galsworth, Ph.D., is an improvement educator, implementer, and coach with more than 25 years in the field of Workplace Visuality. Considered a leading visual expert, Dr. Galsworth is the author of numerous books on strategic improvement and workplace visuality, including Visual Systems, Smart Simple Design, and Visual Workplace/Visual Thinking, recipient of the Shingo Research Prize. She is president and founder of QMI/Visual-Lean® Institute.

A Shingo Prize and Malcolm Baldrige Examiner, Galsworth has helped companies, large and small, accelerate their rates of transformation, strengthen cultural alignments and achieve long-term, sustainable bottom-line outcomes through workplace visuality.

Her clients include: Lockheed Martin, Hitchcock Industries, Parker Denison, Rolls-Royce, Royal Nooteboom Trailers, Delphi Automotive, Alcoa Aluminum, Trailmobile/Canada, Parker Denison, Crompton Greaves/India, Harris Corporation, Midwest Medical Research Center, Seton Name Plate, TVS Sundaram Clayton/India, Sears Home Services, and United Electric Controls.

In the 1980s, Dr. Galsworth worked closely with Dr. Shigeo Shingo to develop, among many things, a western-based Poka-Yoke method and Dr. Ryuji Fukuda to adapt the CEDAC® method and Hoshin Kanri/X-Type Matrix Planning (policy deployment) for western audiences.

Dr. Galsworth holds a Ph.D. in adult learning and statistics and has led American study missions to some of the world's finest production facilities, including those in Japan. She is a frequent keynote speaker on visual systems, strategic leadership, and cultural conversions.

Gwendolyn D. Galsworth, Ph.D., is an improvement educator, implementer, and coach with more than 25 years in the field of Workplace Visuality. Considered a leading visual expert, Dr. Galsworth is the author of numerous books on strategic improvement and workplace visuality, including Visual Systems, Smart Simple Design, and Visual Workplace/Visual Thinking, recipient of the Shingo Research Prize. She is president and founder of QMI/Visual-Lean® Institute.

A Shingo Prize and Malcolm Baldrige Examiner, Galsworth has helped companies, large and small, accelerate their rates of transformation, strengthen cultural alignments and achieve long-term, sustainable bottom-line outcomes through workplace visuality.

In the 1980s, Dr. Galsworth worked closely with Dr. Shigeo Shingo to develop, among many things, a western-based Poka-Yoke method and Dr. Ryuji Fukuda to adapt the CEDAC® method and Hoshin Kanri/X-Type Matrix Planning (policy deployment) for western audiences.

Dr. Galsworth holds a Ph.D. in adult learning and statistics and has led American study missions to some of the world's finest production facilities, including those in Japan. She is a frequent keynote speaker on visual systems, strategic leadership, and cultural conversions.