A weekly production board: every crew's planned and done, day by day, on one wall
The warehouse superintendent hears every foreman say the week is nearly on plan. The slab crew's Monday miss disappears inside its Friday total. A delivery problem repeats, but the monthly report will arrive too late to change next Monday's arrangement.
Give each crew a row and each day a planned quantity, completed quantity and short explanation. The board is a conversation tool supported by actual work records. It should reveal a repeated obstacle while someone can still change it, rather than rank foremen by unrelated numbers. Keep the original promise visible when a plan changes, and mark uncertain quantities honestly. A blank cell is not a completed day.
Keep the board readable and actionable
- Choose meaningful row boundaries. Name the crew, task, location and unit for the week. Split a row when its task or unit changes materially. Do not add metres of pipe to square metres of slab or compare their totals as if they measured the same work.
- Enter the agreed daily plan. Have the foreman confirm a quantity against available work and the intended handover. Retain the dated starting plan. If conditions change, show the revision beside it with its reason rather than quietly reducing yesterday's promise to match the result.
- Record the actual completed quantity. Update after the shift from the crew's work record, using the agreed completion boundary. Identify partial or questioned work separately. Avoid calling material delivered or spread a completed package if further stages remain.
- Add a short reported reason. Use a few consistent categories such as supply, information or access, with a brief located note. Mark an explanation as provisional if it still needs checking. A reason code makes a pattern visible; it does not prove the full cause or allocate responsibility.
- Read the pattern every morning. Ask what yesterday's result changes about today's readiness. Give important obstacles an owner, action and response time. Correct the supply or decision handoff rather than simply asking the same crew to make up the number.
- Review the week without erasing it. Compare quantities, changes and recurring reasons with the foremen. Confirm what action was completed and what happened afterwards. Carry unresolved actions into the next plan and retain a dated board record before resetting the display.
Common mistakes
- Combining incompatible tasks and units.
- Rewriting the plan to match completed work.
- Leaving every reason code without an action owner.
- Using the display to rank unrelated crews instead of improving handoffs.
Checklist
Before the morning production conversation
- Crew, task, location and unit.
- Original plan and visible revisions.
- Completed quantity with a clear boundary.
- Reported reason and supporting record.
- Owned action and response time.
- Retained weekly history and follow-up.
Check your understanding
A crew recovers a Monday miss by Friday. Should the board remove the Monday explanation?
