Obeya, the "WAR ROOM"
Set up an Obeya on a shop floor project: prepare the facts, build the seven boards, launch the workshop and hold the ritual, without the room turning into a wall of paper that nobody reads.
A shop floor project that stretches over several months — new line, production transfer, OEE project on an entire sector — mobilises people from production, maintenance, quality and methods. Each has their own files, their own meetings, their own version of progress. Decisions wait for the next meeting, and the next meeting starts again with twenty minutes of catching up.
The Obeya ("big room" in Japanese) answers this problem: a single place, seven boards, a short and frequent ritual in front of the boards. This introductory course is aimed at shop floor managers, industrial project leaders, methods technicians and continuous improvement facilitators who lead or are about to lead a project with a wide scope.
By the end, you will know how to decide whether your project justifies an Obeya, collect the facts needed before building it, draw the seven boards, run the launch workshop and install a ritual that holds beyond the first month. You will also know how to recognise the five signs of an Obeya that is dying.
What you will be able to do
- Say in one sentence what an Obeya is and distinguish it from a meeting room or a notice board.
- Judge whether a given project justifies an Obeya, based on three simple criteria (scope, number of departments involved, duration).
- Lead the preparation phase: meet the key players and collect the facts on the customer, the stakes, the target and the schedule.
- Build a draft of the seven boards (stakes, voice of the customer, target, indicators, macro-schedule, micro-plan, problem solving) and explain their reading order.
- Run the Obeya workshop to arrive at a first shared version of the boards.
- Define a facilitation ritual (frequency, duration, participants, facilitator, rotation) and test it over a few weeks.
- Spot the common mistakes: information overload, boards not updated, meeting that turns back into a classic project review, closed door.
The path
- What the Obeya solves, and when it is useless 4 min
- Phase 1: collect the facts before touching the wall 4 min
- The seven boards and their reading order 5 min
- Phase 2: the workshop that turns the draft into a shared version 4 min
- Phase 3: the ritual that keeps the room alive 4 min
- The mistakes that kill an Obeya, and the signs that it works 3 min
Prerequisites
No formal Lean prerequisites. It is useful to have already taken part in a shop floor project involving several departments, and to have seen a visual management board or a daily team meeting. The notions of PDCA, A3 report and VSM are recalled in one sentence at their first appearance; the academy's dedicated topics cover them in more depth.
The closing quiz
The topic ends with a 7-question quiz, and a certificate is issued on success.