Obeya “War Room” a powerful Visual Management Tool.

On Toyota Management System there is one Visual Tool that helps the teams to reach the Goals and promotes generations of solutions and actions; that can be developed and implemented quickly.

This tool is known as Obeya (War Room); many people think, it is just one type of Obeya but there are different types on the organizations.

Before to describe the types, lest understand the theory behind the Obeya or “Big Room / War Room”.

The Theory behind Obeya is based on a simple idea:

Dedicate time and space to Coordination and problem-solving and organizational barriers will be minimized. The ability to maintain Proper Problem Awareness in Real-time, listen to Team Member, concerns, make discoveries, resolve problems together, collaborate, accelerate leader and team-member development and reach our full potential is critical to a Lean Organization.

The Obeya promotes coordination, strategy and flexibility while leveraging the

expertise and support of teammates from diverse areas.

Types of Obeya:

Global Launch Obeya;

When developing a new vehicle, managers responsible for decision making in design, production engineering, and manufacturing gather in one place to shorten

lead-time through real-time communications & simultaneous engineering.

Business Process Layout Obeya:

Centralized data collection, prioritizing and action planning.

Focus Obeya;

Ø   Project War Rooms

Ø   SQDC/PDCA

Ø   A3 Problem Solving

Ø   Jishuken rooms

Its very important to consider some points for Obeya :

1.    I strong recommend to use just two colors, Red and Green, for status, not Yellow, Orange, Blue ect. The reason behind this is to avoid ambiguities; the status is OK or NOT OK.

2.    Define Metrics on SMART ways, not more than 5 metrics, due is impractical review every day 100 metrics.

3.    Issues Boards, there is mandatory, the team is prompted to solve issues immediately, the procrastination to solve the problem is not allowed.

4.    Discipline for meeting attending on time and should last no more than 10 min.

5.    The Flow for Obeya is CPDCA instead of normal PDCA.

Here one video of Takashi Tanaka - Lean for Knowledge Work,  Mr. Takashi gives a great explanation about the use of Obeya.

I hope this help you in your next Project.