Q 378. What is an "Obeya Room"? Why is it necessary to have one for large cross functional projects?

 

 

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OBEYA ROOM:

Obeya means “LARGE ROOM” or “WAR ROOM” in Japanese. This originally involves bringing together departmental leaders in a large common room to focus on big picture issues involved with a single project or initiative. An Obeya is a room set up to get employees out of their isolated work places like cubicles or cabins to a central location where they can meet, discuss the issues and information, and solve pressing problems.

 

 

Obeya rooms are primarily designed to reduce isolated work culture within the organizations and improve inter-departmental communication. An obeya room gives leaders a clear view of work environment like what and how everyone is working on and at the same time it gives the idea how their own department's efforts support or hinder their colleagues and other departments.

 

Here are few reasons why having an Obeya Room is necessary to for large cross functional projects:

• Cross functional large project needs high level of communication and coordination between different departments of the organization. Obeya Room is the best for this purpose.
• Obeya room encourage team building and team work which is the first and important requirement for any successful large project.
• Obeya provides the opportunity to removes silos within the organization which is key factor for any successful cross functional project.Obeya make goals and problems visible so these can be discussed openly. This generally provides creative, innovative and quick solutions for the critical problems.

What is an Obeya?

Obeya is a devoted meeting room created to meet employees and make several important decisions on an initiative or an issue.

This can also be used to conduct meeting to brainstorm how to improve productivity, optimize cost and improve customer satisfaction. This is not another meeting room but will have wall board to depict the cross functional process map, value stream mapping, value/non value add analysis, project milestones, project team members details, etc. Some company equips with the help new technology information like dashboard displays, real time production status and more

Post-it/color paper, icons, symbols and visual dashboard are main aspect of Obeya. To create the enthusiastic on the project discussion- Posters, Charts, Labels and Graphical methods are used which will help employees visualize and understand information quickly.

 

Why it is necessary ?

• Helps to create more focus on the problem of the project – More team involvement
• Information on the Project, Team members and project milestone plan – Create transparency
• Displays the list of actionable from the project discussion. – Improve teamwork and engagement
• One place to see the project actions, deliverables and status. – Road shows

 

What is Obeya

Obeya comes from the Japanese word, meaning "Large Rooms" .Obeya is also called as Lean manufacturing tool , where a dedicated room is set aside for employees in the organisation where they can meet , discuss & resolve any issues . The concept behind setting up rooms is to ensure there are no barriers between employees & they can collaborate decide & share information to aid in efficient decision making. An ] Obeya room has far-reaching impacts in the workplace that enhance productivity, save money, increase efficiency, and improve communication.

For Example : A company has considered to launch a new Return to office  policy , there are series of discussions between different domains required to check on feasibility and Headcount capacity to accomodate whilst adhering to social norms at office , thereby the decision in this Obeya rooms gets formulated as policies and rolled out for larger population in the company. On a need basis Obeya might hosts charts, maps, comparative studies to convey the concerns & requirements , we might also see the usage of whiteboards & other collaborative materials that allow all employees to find solution together or decide upon a certain decision jointly 

 

Conceptualisation

Obeya came in existence as early as 1990 and the concept was introduced by Toyota during the production of Prius. The then chief Engineer of Toyota Takeshi Uchiyamada who led the Prius project cited that in order to create a new car in such a stringent timeline , he needed to integrate the efforts of diverse experts across different departments - Engineering, Design, Production who would be responsible in the final production of the car. Eventually cross functional teams formed & meeting initiated through Obeya Rooms. The Frequency of number of meeting in Obeya rooms & cross teams collaboration accelerated as the project deadlines approached . Prius remain among the most popular electric vehicle which reached the market a dozen years before competitors , hence the success story drew attention of other business leaders looking to imbibe the best practices from Toyota and have desired outcome.

 

Setting up Obeya

Obeya is like a 'ground control' to the lean project mission , hence its becomes extremely crucial to first determine the goal for the project or business strategy before we set up an Obeya room .Obeya rooms bring together different leaders from different departments  & be involved in the project . The philosophy behind setting up Obeya is from Lean

Where ultimately the end focus is the final product - the results of different specialists working together to create Customer values .

Few others facets of an Obeya room include

1. Reports which highlight the problem statement , analysis of the issue, proposed solutions and action plan 

2. Charts, Graphs to have a displayed representation of facts & plan strategy to track progress

3.During challenges , visual representation can display proposed solutions.

 

 

Benefits of Obeya

 

The concept of Obeya is to have all information available to everyone at all times thereby Labelling, signage and visual aid are the key components of an effective Obeya, where the information can be easily understood by all. Thereby Obeya rooms help Organisations to create this value of brining together managers from various functions to solve problems or decide .It gives a clear view of what each team is working, why are they working & how are they mapping the ultimate goal.An Obeya promotes faster & quicker problem solving by speeding up the PDFCA process ( Plan-Do-Check- Act).An Obeya brings togethers Decision makers to implement the PDCA cycle and develop solutions quickly rather than  long email chains , communicating over course of days & weeks through arduous meetings. Obeya facilitates effective & timely communication 

 

Obeya, in Japanese means “large room”, involves bringing together various departmental leaders in the organization to focus on big picture issues involved with a single project or initiative. Creating an Obeya room is similar to creating a “war room,” a command center that brings together leaders from across departments in an organization. Basketball game offers a suitable analogy to Obeya. A basketball team has three-point shooters, defensive specialists, and mid-range shooters, those who work “in the paint” near the basket, and players who see the whole court well and distribute the ball to other players so they can score in match effectively. Each player has their own skill sets and work hard on perfecting them. However, to win, a smart coach practices the team together, building upon their skills to create an effective team. Philosophy behind obeya comes from Lean. Ultimately, everything must focus on how the final product – the result of different specialists working together – creates value for the customer.

 

 

How this concept of ‘Obeya’ Originated ?

 

This concept originated in Toyota while production of its one of its famous and innovative model i.e. Prius in 1990s. Chief Engineer of the G21 (Global 21^st Century) project for Prius at Toyota, Takeshi Uchiyamada “felt that he lacked the necessary authority to make the optimal decisions, and thought he could be overrun by experienced discipline leaders in a way that was not optimal for the project as such”. He realized that to create the new car in a compressed timeline, he must integrate the efforts of diverse experts in engineering, design and production – everyone who had a contribution in the final product. Eventually, the meetings started to include people from the other domains too, such as representatives of marketing and sales. He met with leaders from each area two to three times a week, with the number of meetings increasing as the project deadline approached. Using the concept of Obeya, Prius reached the market 15 years ahead of the competition and remained a market leader in electric vehicles for over a decade. This huge success achieved using Obeya drew the attention of another industries and other Businesses leaders and they started using this concept in their respective organizations. Famous companies using the concept of Obeya now are : Toyota, Nike, Boeing, and Volvo.

 

How Obeya is formed ?

During the product and process development, all individuals involved in managerial planning meet in a "great room" to speed up the communication and decision-making process. This is intended to increase efficiency and bring a better information flow to the project. Often associated in product development, an Obeya room can also be a place for software development, a command center, managing new business strategy, workflow and project management during a new software or a business platform development. This tool motivates people to work together without any distractions and creates a great atmosphere to generate new ideas. Similar to traditional “war rooms,” an Obeya will contain visually engaging charts and graphs depicting such information as program timing, milestones and progress-to-date etc. . In some companies, they term it as an iObeya or Adrenaline  Room. iOberya is a virtual digital Visual Management Platform which mimics the Obeya room atmosphere / layout virtually.  Key components of the Obeya Room includes Charts, Graphs, A3 Sheets, Visual tools like signage, Labelling etc.  Sample layout of Obeya Room as below :

 

 

 

OKRs (Objectives and Key Results) for Obeya :

i)  Rapid Decision Making

ii) Reduction of Rework

iii) Avoidance of Unnecessary Discussions

iv) Better Information Flow in Organization / Across Departments

v) Quick Ideas Generation

vi) Savings on Efforts and Cost

vii) Removal or reduction of 7 kind of Wastes as per Lean (WORMPIT / TIMWOOD) and Waste of Intellect too

 

Key Benefits to Organization post Obeya Creation :

 

i) Improvement in Team Efficiency : A project’s leadership team can save time by bringing helpful visuals, necessary information, and vital resources together in one place which results in effective collaboration and resulting into team efficiency.

ii)  Focus : Having key team / functional members in the same room for discussions means that project leaders can focus on the right issues

iii) Working Together : An Obeya fosters an environment in which employees can work together across the disciplines and in real-time, rather than connecting via e-mail or in rushed meetings

Key areas those can be improved in an Organization using Obeya Concept :

• SLAs / KPIs Performance
• Customer Satisfaction
• Financial Performance
• Employee Satisfaction
• Infrastructure Improvement
• Technological Upgradations
• Employee Recruitment Timelines etc.

Physical Obeya Limits :

One drawback of the physical Obeya is that the Obeya Room is not suitable for an international team or remote working team. If someone can’t be there in-person, it becomes difficult to include them in the meeting via a webcam because the practicality of an Obeya Room is to interact live and view the different panels.

 

So to sum up, given the above Obeya Benefits, its is imperative that organizations and specially the large organizations must use the concept of Obeya to improve the interdepartmental communications and to improve the decision making process. Since in large organizations, sometimes departments work in silos and information flow from one department to another is not proper which causes rework and delay in decision making too often. Hence it’s recommended that large organizations must use the concept of Obeya to improve the trust, focus, communication, work visibility, clarity of thought process etc. between the departments.

Obeya  is "large room" or "war room" refers to a form of project management used in Asian companies (including Toyota) and is a component of lean manufacturing and in particular the Toyota Production System.

 

This is absolutely important in large projects be it any sector where we are working in cross functional team. Either face to face or virtually, iobeya is a digital visual management platform that mimics the obeya room experience, and the benefits are :

 

1.     Aligned to the problem, objective and goals and get to discuss openly

2.     To keep the focus on the project

3.     Sharing information with the entire team at one stretch, keeping them up to date

4.     Enables creative problem solving and innovation

5.     Visibility on what each one is working and contributing 

6.     Team bonding

 

 

With no walls between the teams it eases out for people to discuss and expedite the execution. Breaks the work in silos which is perennial issue with many organizations.

 

Agility is well demonstrated in such scenarios, devops is one such having a similar approach. A couple of challenges that we need to address could be confidentiality and availability of people at the required time.

 

 

 

Visual Management is an important tool in the Lean methodology which helps in informing and involving anybody in the process, even those who are unrelated, and helps them to see, quickly,  what is the progress and ensures that everyone understands what is going well and what is not.
 

Obeya, when translated from Japanese means “Big Room”, is a Lean concept, with Visual Management principles.  Obeya focuses on creating a physical space wherein the team strategies and plans the projects. It helps in collaborating with management and stakeholders, get and provide an update on the project progress and any impediments.  Obeya can also be used to brainstorm to come up with solutions for the impediments.

A typical Obeya room is a vital location where everyone part of the value creation meets and brainstorm, ask questions, generate ideas, and debate.   Obeyas are distinct as walls pasted with graphs, posters, whiteboards and other visual aids. Obeya rooms aim to spark creativity, break silos and increase collaboration. It can help in shortening the Plan-Do-Check-Act (PDCA) cycle.

Obeyas are necessary for large cross functional projects as:

• It is a very powerful approach to ensure Strategic Alignment as it helps in connecting strategy to execution with visible focus on customer/user experience
• It acts as a strong pillar for employee engagement as people come together and contribute to resolving real time problems and help in developing high impact improvements
• It helps in proving a boost to the business performance as it enables tracking and measurement of performance, productivity and the resultant Business Value. 
• It ensures that optimal decisions are taken as a team, even though the team may have presence of some senior leaders.

Obeya Room: Which was created by Toyata, which means “Large Room” in Japanese.

 

Objective is to bring together cross functional leaders to focus on big picture issues on any of the initiative or project.

 

Obeya room is called “War Room”, Since there would be many different voices from the functional leaders on the issues for given project or initiative

 

We know in the real world, organizations have different departments like Information technology, Marketing, Human resources, sales and operations who works separately. And have their department goals to achieve by their expertise. But how they interlock to common organizational goals is very important and much needed for the business to be successful.

 

Development of that vision must start at the top, which is why an obeya room brings together leaders from all the departments involved in a project

 

An obeya room helps organizations to create value by bringing together managers across functions. An obeya is clearly a tool of teamwork: helping managers in various functions solve problems across their borders.”

What is Obeya Room? - Obeya Room means a large room or meeting place, (in Japanese language) in an organisation or a forum created within an organisation, of cross functional leaders, to resolve a big challenge or issues related to policy or product, from a broader perspective. This is also some times called as "War Room"  of inter departmental leaders, to finalize software development, developing a new business strategy, defining or refining project management system or redefining a workflow management system in an organisation.

 

History of Obeya Room: In 1990s Toyota brought the concept of Obeya Room during the production of Prius. Takeshi Uchiyamada from Toyota is the one who created Obeya room. During the creation of Prius, which is considered to be an engineering marvel much ahead of time, Takeshi realized that if Toyota has to conceptualize and manufacture such a product, that too in a crunched timeline, then their should be involvement of all the cross functional leaders/experts from various departments like, Engineering Design, R&D, Prodcut Development, Production, Human Resources, Finance department and Sales & Marketing. Since then this concept has spread to many companies like Nike etc..

 

How is Obeya Room useful?

1. It helps us to break our silos and helps us in achieving results faster
2. It helps generate value for an organization by bringing leaders & experts from all the relevant departments
3. It helps create transparency within an organisation to understand what initiatives are taken by which department and avoids any duplication
4. It shows how initiatives/efforts of each department supports or hinders other's initiatives/efforts and thus avoids any conflict and drive faster results

Some use cases of Obeya Room concept:

1. Quarterly review meetings of an organisation is a perfect example where leaders from each function and every enabling function come together, share the progress on the initiatives each one of them had defined for themselves for the previous quarter and also shares what initiatives they are going to take up for the upcoming quarter. This clearly helps in corporate alignment by creating transparency and avoid duplication of efforts.
2. If any organisation is working on an big RFP, it is going to be very useful, if all the leaders of the cross functional team come together and work on it.. This way the RFP can come out to be very competitive and the chances of winning becomes much higher
3. Coming up with a new concept or launching a new product in the market
4. Coming up with a new policy framework in an organization which has long lasting impact on the organisation

Question : What is an "Obeya Room"? Why is it necessary to have one for large cross functional projects?

Answer: Obeya is a Japanese word which means a “Big Room” or “War Room”. This room is used in workplace to get employees out of their workstations, offices to a central location where they all meet and discuss the key information and identify the solutions for business problems. This room helps employees to come out of daily ongoing deliverables which helps them to think out of box on the ongoing problems / challenges with fresh mindset as a team.

 

The purpose of these rooms to improve collaboration, alignment and speed of problem solving. Employees in this room communicate face to face with each other and collaborate on the work and post information about the work on the walls with colorful stickies which is visible and understood to everyone.

 

Obeya rooms are very much important if we have to run a large project where we have multiple teams or departments included because : by using Obeya room we have all the people in one room and they can openly share their dependencies, challenges and opportunities in one go which gives clear understanding to the entire group on the road blocks and possible improvements.

For example of a Warehouse, XYZ company is looking to boost warehouse safety and will include people from various departments like:

• Engineers to discuss new equipment
• Safety managers to review ongoing safety concerns
• Warehouse workers to discuss challenges on the working floor
• Human resources representatives to analyze and communicate new policies.

This obeya might host charts, images, maps, and more to convey the concerns, along with whiteboards and other collaborative materials that allow employees to find solutions together.

 

What we need to run Obeya Room?

Every company has their own different work culture and different work hence we cant expect the all Obeya rooms will be similar or 2 Obeyas will be similar in one organization. But still there are few core and important elements those in obeyas to include :

• Charts, graphs, and drawings (to depict a project’s progress, milestones, timing, schedules and other timely data)
• Desks / tables for project leaders
• Anything else to facilitate strategic problem-solving like any tool for real-time displays, computer systems, any pole system or more

Obeya is often referred to as “Large room” in a project. The origin of this term was from Toyota in 1990s during their project G21, which led to the first generation of  Toyota Prius. Takeshi Uchiyamada was appointed the Chief Engineer for the project, and he always felt that he lacked the required authority to make the right decisions and feared being overrun by more experienced department leaders, which may adversely impact the project.

In order to ensure he had alignment from all stakeholders he constituted the “large room” – Obeya in Japanese – as an arena for discussions with the department leaders. This forum will have all the relevant stakeholder with relevant data and information to make decision making seamless. The concept of Obeya room was largely successful in Toyota, and hence they integrated it as part of Toyota Product Development System.

 

Why is Obeya required for large cross functional projects –

 

The biggest challenge in cross functional project is, the individual functions not seeing the big-picture of the how a new product or service will bring to the organization. They operate in silos, which in-turn results in lack of synergy between functions or department and result in project delays or failure.

According to Shigeo Shingo: "People don't care what until they understand why." The organization vision and operational objectives well-articulated, gives meaning to the employees, which result in improved commitment and accountability for employees to act.

 

Various tools like Hoshin Kanri are used to create alignment between activities, and to establish organizations vision, Individual and team goals. Obeya, helps to visualize Hoshin Kanri, and helps create a collaborative environment for cross functional problem sharing and decision making.

 

In Obeya rooms (as explained in the above diagram), cross functional project teams can be focused on the project or organizations vision. Measure the success using KPIs, identify gaps in meeting KPIs quickly and follow a PDCA cycle (plan, do, check, act)  to resolve issues, resulting in timely completion of projects with minimum resistance.

 

Obeya Room:

            The word Obeya in Japanese word & simply means “big room”. Obeya as a product development supporting tool was introduced by Uchiyamada the project chief of Hybrid car development project in late 90’s. This tool was a used by Toyota’s and achieved greatest success in a shorter time with reduced cost. Obeya also called as “war room”, “program room”, “control room” and “the pulse room”. By any name, Obeya is an advanced visual control innovation room  that activities and deliverables are outlined and depicted in a visualize format to be discussed in frequent meetings.

Obeya as an program room which Value Stream Mapping (VSM), all integrated activities and events, program notes, takt times and lean product development flow should be demonstrated on the walls and even other separated meetings
ought to be linked to program room. Likewise, smaller rooms are required nearby for breakaway discussions whereas the main room should consist of some facilities such as 19 networked computers, printers, projectors, ample writing materials along with a big conference table with enough chairs to accommodate the team members. Furthermore,
Andersson Schaeffer (2011) mentions that interior design and even size of such room can influence the communication and efficiency of the room.
Obeya can be used to indicate different ongoing projects in the company in order to control the progress and support any further effort(Söderberg and Alfredson, 2009). Andersson and Bellgran (2009) describe that some companies are using a room similar to Obeya in order to check various similar development projects. The aims of such rooms are to integrate product development and production to have better and more production-friendly products. Those companies named following benefits for such room

 Effective communication, cross functional work and accurate decision-making
 Empowering the project identity
 Facilitating the project manager’s responsibilities
 Time reduction in information flow by visualizing VSM.
 Shorter lead times for development projects
 Positive inspiration for organization and its employees
 Achieving and absorbing knowledge
 Reinforce the impression of professionalism

Obeya Room

 

An Obeya Room is a Setup created where all the Employees are asked to gather at a Central Location where they can meet, discuss and solve the Problems.

 

This was first created by Toyota in the 1990s during production of the Prius. Since then, organizations across many industries have put the concept into action. Obeya, which means “large room” in Japanese, involves bringing together departmental leaders to focus on big picture issues involved with a single project or initiative.

 

Employees working in a team or on a Particular project are asked to Collaborate on the Work, communicate face to face and post Information on the Walls about the work done for everyone else to see.

 

Obeya room is considered a Component of Lean Manufacturing.

 

The Obeya Room is Necessary for Large cross functional projects as -

 

1.      It Aligns Employees to speed the process of solving problem

2.     Helps down working in Silos

3.     Used as a Command Center

4.     Managing new Business Strategy, new Product Development

5.    Allows the Leaders a Crystal Clear Picture of what everyone is doing, how everyone is working on and why they are working on a particular Task

6.     Helps for Resource planning and Alignment too

Obeya room is the room which is assigned to run large projects or initiatives  and to support the teams in decision making, improve cross functional and stakeholder interactions. Its also called as War room. It was used very Frequently and its very relevant part of the Toyota production system. The importance or the focus of the obeya room is inculcate the culture of social networking and reduce the thinking only limited to a function. Inside the obeya rooms you will showcase charts, graphs, milestones and progress update . Current risks/mitigation steps including the technical/schedule /cost related issues also will be listed.

IN TPS its often told as a visual technique to reach the objectives faster as its helps the stakeholders to come under one room and discuss all the problems and identify solutions and put into actions.

 

Benefits of obeya rooms in crossfunctional projects

1. Eliminates the problem-solving barriers- time, interaction with stakeholders
2. GO into the depth of the problem when all the team members are present in the same room. Clarify the questions and enhances understanding the of the problem
3. Add different perspectives of same problem which helps to come up with innovative solutions and make the whole process a lean activity 
4. Encourages team work and cross functional communication 

Obeya is Lean concept which focuses on creating a physical space where team strategize and plan the project. Lean best practice to inform and involve anyone in the process , and quickly allow them to see and understand which is in control and what is not through Visual Management.

 

The main purpose of the Obeya is to keep the management team’s eyes on the objective and to develop teamwork

 

Yes it is necessary to have one room ( Obeya) for large cross functions projects as it seen from large companies such as Toyota, Nike ,Boeing ,etc. uses Obeya room and it is benefiting them to promote problem solving among teams,  as well as building communication.

 

I would like to shared one live scenario in our organization , we have used the same concept of obeya room to solve one business problem by involving specialist from cross functional team to come up with effective solution. During this period team was working daily in same room ( Training room our Obeya room) till the project was closed.

This lean concept has helped team to have focused approach on the finding effective solution with team work & in turn created great team bonding among the cross function team members.

All published answers have correctly highlighted the importance of Obeya Rooms. Benoy Joseph has explained it the best and hence is the winner!