The Contribution of Obeya for Business Intelligence

Introduction

A great market competitiveness exists currently. Hence, the companies increasingly invest in teams dedicated to optimizing processes and implementing Lean Manufacturing techniques, intending to increase productivity (Oliveira et al., 2017; Ribeiro et al., 2019; Correia et al., 2018; Rosa et al., 2017a). The ability to control the market and monitor the development of competing companies forces organizations to evolve their efficiency level and reduce the processes costs (Katayama & Bennett, 1996). However, it is only possible to raise the company’s productivity indexes with a well-defined strategy and in accordance with pre-established objectives (Katayama & Bennett, 1996; Neves et al., 2018). Thus, companies must develop methods of data tracking related to the implementation of their strategy. The performance indicators is one of the methods used, which facilitate the control of the performance of the departments that integrate the organization (Rodrigues et al., 2019). Regularly, most companies use Key Performance Indicators (KPI) and Key Behaviour Indicators (KBI) to support daily or weekly meeting, which promote a skilful and thoughtful decision. In this sense, through KPIs and KBIs, companies are able to quickly identify problems and find the best way to solve them (Rakar et al., 2004).

The use of performance indicators helps substantially in meeting the pre-established objectives (Jiménez-Delgado et al., 2020; Santos et al., 2019b). However, it is important to enhance their use, that is, KPIs must be easily accessible to all employees (Rakar et al., 2004), so that the information is transversal to all departments, instead of being posted on a board or wall of a company room (Machado et al., 2019; Ferreira et al., 2019). An example of this is the Obeya room, which has origin in the 90s at Toyota through Takeshi Uchiyamada. He realized that he did not have the necessary authority to make the ideal decisions and that he needed the support of the leaders of the other departments to find the best solution and to apply it in a quicker way (Aasland & Blankenburg, 2012b). Obeya is a visual space, usually located in the Gemba, where meetings are held to discuss problems and, therefore, reach a solution to them (Sá et al., 2020). It is important for decision making that the data is up to date and truthful with the present landscape of the organization (Aasland & Blankenburg, 2012a).