Visual management tools are a common sight in most manufacturing facilities and help supervisors keep track of operations by providing a visual snapshot of KPIs and other important metrics.
One of the common iterations of visual management in the manufacturing environment is the SQCDP board. This board gives visibility into production performance, allowing manufacturers to improve relevant key performance indicators displayed on the board.
In this post, we’ll discuss how SQCDP boards are used in manufacturing how this tool can help drive your continuous improvement efforts in 2023 and beyond.
What is an SQCDP board?
An SQCDP board is a visual tool displaying selected production metrics and KPIs on the factory floor, depicting the team’s success in meeting these specific objectives.
The acronym SQCDP comprises the five general performance factors that define optimal manufacturing operations. In other words, the visual tools provide information regarding Safety, Quality, Cost, Delivery, and People.
Manufacturers will typically position the SQCDP board in a prominent, high-traffic area to provide quick access to information to everyone on the shop floor. As such, the team can easily track production performance, allowing for timely improvement across categories.
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What is included on an SQCDP board?
The five production performance categories depicted on an SQCDP board comprehensively cover the various happenings within a production environment. When manufacturers list various performance indicators under each category, they enable complete visibility of everything happening across the shop floor.
Here are some key metrics manufacturers typically add to this visual management tool:
Safety
The Safety aspect of SQCDP boards helps to track and monitor various safety elements of the manufacturing process. This includes metrics such as the number of accidents, near-misses, and other safety incidents. This information is used to identify and address potential safety hazards, and to ensure that all employees are working in a safe environment. Some of the key metrics that are tracked include:
Number of incidents
Days without incidents
Events almost leading to a safety incident
Injuries
Safety violations
Days missed due to safety incidents
Quality
The Quality aspect of SQCDP boards focuses on monitoring and improving the quality of the manufactured products. This includes a focus on quality defects, rework, and customer complaints. By monitoring these metrics, manufacturers can identify areas of the manufacturing process that may be causing quality issues and take steps to address them. Some key quality metrics include:
Number of defective or nonconforming items
Customer claims
Production yield
Cost
The Cost aspect of SQCDP boards is used to track and monitor the cost of the manufacturing process. This includes metrics such as raw material costs, labor, and energy. By monitoring these metrics, manufacturers can identify areas where they can reduce costs and improve efficiency. KPIs here include:
Inventory cost
Waste and scrap cost
Cost of overtime work
Deviations from cost projections
Delivery
The Delivery aspect of SQCDP boards is used to track and monitor the delivery of the manufactured products. By monitoring delivery metrics, manufacturers can ensure that they are meeting customer delivery expectations and can take steps to improve delivery times if needed. Key delivery metrics include:
Lead time
On-time delivery
Full order fulfillment
Planned product volume and actual volume
People
The People aspect of SQCDP boards is used to track and monitor the performance of the employees on the shop floor. This includes metrics such as employee turnover, absenteeism, and training completion. By monitoring these metrics, manufacturers can identify areas where they need to improve employee engagement and satisfaction. For example:
Overtime
Personnel changes
Paid time off
Skill development
Benefits of an SQCDP board
This visual management tool provides manufacturing businesses with a number of benefits, ultimately allowing them to optimize production operations for overall business success. Some of the specific benefits of SQCDP boards include:
Improved visibility: SQCDP boards provide a visual representation of key performance indicators and metrics, making it easy for employees to understand the performance of the manufacturing process and identify areas for improvement.
Increased accountability: By displaying performance data in a public location, SQCDP boards hold employees accountable for their actions and can encourage them to work towards meeting or exceeding performance targets.
Enhanced communication: SQCDP boards can serve as a tool for communicating performance data and goals to employees, helping to improve engagement and motivation.
Increased efficiency: By monitoring KPIs, manufacturers can identify areas of inefficiency and identify opportunities to automate processes, streamline workflows, and reduce costs.
Better quality control: SQCDP boards can help manufacturers identify areas of the manufacturing process that may be causing quality issues, allowing them to take steps to improve quality and reduce defects.
Increased safety: SQCDP boards can help manufacturers track and monitor safety performance, which can help identify and address potential safety hazards, and ensure that all employees are working in a safe environment.
Improved delivery times: By mWhy you should digitize your vonitoring delivery metrics, manufacturers can ensure that they are meeting customer delivery expectations and can take steps to improve delivery times if needed.
Employee engagement: SQCDP boards can help manufacturers track and monitor employee performance, which can help identify areas where they need to improve employee engagement and satisfaction.
Implementing an SQCDP Board That Actually Helps
An SQCDP board only matters if it helps teams spot issues and fix them. Skip the Lean show. Focus on what people can use during the shift.
1. Pick a few real metrics
One to three per area like Safety, Quality, Cost, Delivery, People. Use numbers the team can move every day. Scrap rate, missed deliveries, attendance, minor injuries. Keep it close to the work.
2. Give each section an owner
Someone must keep it current and push problems forward. Data doesn’t update itself. When people know who owns what, the board starts to drive action instead of decoration.
3. Use it in the daily huddle
Five to ten minutes, standing up. Go line by line. What’s red, what needs help, who’s on it. No slides, no long talks. Just facts and next steps.
4. Keep tracking simple
Red means off target. Green means good. When a box turns red, log it, name who’s handling it, and mark the date. Anyone walking by should see what’s stuck.
5. Move problems upward fast
If something can’t be fixed in a day, send it to the next level—supervisor, engineer, CI. The board connects layers of the plant, not just one team.
6. Update it without fail
Out-of-date boards die quick. Decide who updates what and when. If the data looks old, nobody believes it.
7. Review it once a month
Sit down with leads and CI. Drop what’s not helping, keep what is. The board should change as the process changes.
Digital vs. Physical SQCDP Boards
Both kinds of SQCDP boards help teams see how they’re performing. The difference shows up in how fast they surface problems and how easily they scale across sites.
Criteria | Physical Board | Digital Board |
Accessibility | Viewable only in the area where it’s posted. Updates happen on-site. | Can be seen anywhere—tablet, kiosk, or browser. |
Accuracy | Handwritten numbers, sometimes late or missing. | Pulls live data or quick operator entries. |
Setup Time | Easy to start, but limited once you want more structure. | Takes longer to configure but easier to expand later. |
Engagement | Big and visible, good for driving attention during huddles. | Interactive screens, alerts, and comments keep people involved. |
Escalation | Issues written down or passed along separately. | Alerts and audit trails make follow-up automatic. |
Data History | No built-in record; photos or paper copies if you want to save it. | Data stored, searchable, and time-stamped. |
Physical boards work best when you’re getting the basics in place and the team’s still building the habit.
Digital boards make more sense once the routine is solid and you want to tie sites together or pull live data without chasing spreadsheets.
Challenges and What Actually Works
SQCDP boards look simple. Getting them to stick across shifts or sites is the hard part. Here’s where teams usually stumble, and what the strong ones do differently.
Data Accuracy
The challenge:
When numbers lag or don’t match reality, people stop trusting them. Manual entry, different definitions, and missed updates are the usual culprits.
What works:
Keep the scope small at first. Automate updates as soon as you can. Link data to your MES or Tulip apps to cut down on typing. Define every metric the same way, “on-time delivery” shouldn’t mean five different things around the plant.
Engagement
The challenge:
Boards fade into the background when they don’t feel connected to daily work. If no one owns the data or sees their part in it, the board turns into decoration.
What works:
Keep it tied to the crew. Use short daily standups around the board to talk through problems, not just read numbers. Rotate who leads. Let teams set one or two improvement targets based on their own metrics.
Training
The challenge:
Even a whiteboard needs structure. Without clear onboarding, new hires don’t know what the board is showing or what they’re expected to do with it.
What works:
Document the routine, who updates, how to log a red, when to escalate. For digital setups, add short help clips or tooltips right in the screen so people can learn while using it.
Bottom line:
SQCDP boards work when the process around them is stable. Keep the data clean, the discussions short, and the ownership clear. That’s what turns a board from a display into a habit.
The importance of digitizing your visual management tools
SQCDP boards are an important tool for manufacturers to track and monitor important metrics and KPIs on the shop floor. They provide a visual representation of the performance of the manufacturing process, and can be used to identify areas of improvement and drive continuous improvement efforts.
Oftentimes, however, these visual management tools are static, typically displayed on whiteboards with manual writing and data entry. While beneficial at a high level, this more traditional visual management tool creates some limitations compared to a real-time, digital representation.
First, static SQCDP boards are anchored in one location, making the data less accessible to those located away from the shop floor. By digitizing this information, supervisors and managers can access their KPIs from anywhere, at any time. This allows those responsible to identify problems and issue corrective action in a more timely manner.
Additionally, digital production dashboards and visual management tools can be integrated with various other systems and tools, providing a real-time view of exactly what’s happening on the shop floor as opposed to a daily or weekly update. By integrating these tools with the overarching planning and execution systems, the dashboard can provide more actionable insights for decision-makers.
How Tulip can help
Tulip’s Frontline Operations Platform can connect the various, systems, machines, and operators within a manufacturing environment to automate data collection and track progress across every stage of production.
Our platform is flexible and can be customized to fit your existing systems and processes, enabling seamless integration. Additionally, data can be displayed on any device and accesses from any location allowing managers and supervisors to respond quickly and drive continuous improvement initiatives.
If you’re interested in learning how Tulip can be used to collect and visualize real-time production data, reach out to a member of our team today!
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They give everyone, from operators to engineers, a single place to track what’s happening. No chasing down updates or guessing who’s responsible. It’s all right there, out in the open.
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Absolutely. We've seen it in maintenance, logistics, even some office functions. If there’s a repeatable process and a few key metrics, SQCDP can bring structure to it.
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Not quite. Tiered meetings happen across levels- team lead, supervisor, manager. SQCDP is one of the tools those meetings often rely on, especially at the operator level.
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If your team already knows what to track, it can be live in a week or two. Rolling it out across multiple shifts or sites usually takes longer, especially if it’s digital.
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Trying to make it perfect from day one. Too many metrics, too much formatting, it gets overwhelming. Start simple, use it daily, and build from there.
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