On How to Express Abnormal Information in Traffic Light for Designing Advanced Visual Management System

Abstract

In order for learning the best practice of lean management in other industries, this
paper tackles with the following challenge. This is the analysis of three traffic lights for walkers
as a useful visual management system in other industries. These cases are one conventional case
in Japan and two advanced cases in Japan and Taiwan. The methodology for the analysis is a
state transition diagram which is one useful tool for extracting detail movement realized by
elemental technologies of analyzed case. It is found that two improved cases have two
directions for designing useful visual management system in the future. First one is for how to
make abnormal information. Conventional case has condition information of an abnormal.
However two improved cases have real time information of an abnormal by countdown method.
Second one is for how to deliver abnormal information. In the improved case in Taiwan, an
animation method is utilized to joyfully make walkers look for making walkers hurry to cross a
road until the traffic light turns red. These two findings indicate that 1) an addition of real time
based visualization (RTBV) to condition based visualization (CBV) and 2) an addition of
animated image visualization (AIV) to static image visualization (SIV) will be necessitated for
future development of a visual management system.