Do you have an Andon cord to pull at work?

The Andon cord (although it doesn’t exist anymore) is one of the key symbols of the Toyota Production System. Pulling this cord enable any worker on the production floor to stop the production process if he sees any issue or concerns regarding safety, process or quality.

Most of the readers of my blog are not working on the production floor, but they are part of many business processes that are crucial for a company to provide value and be viable. Majority of the readers are executing part of their business value chain by sitting behind a computer or spending time with other people.

While most of the common business processes in organizations are already digitized, the nervous system of an organization is not. The nervous system is responsible for getting feedbacks and realizing needs both internally and externally, start the right process, and confirm closed feedback loop by getting feedback from the source that initiates the nervous system. Regretfully those activities are all manual and done with people who are subject to cognitive biase.

Since the nervous system of an organization is manual, it is a set of peer to peer interactions with intentional segregation of information. Decisions are done without getting a holistic view and without involving all the needed stakeholders. The current nervous system of an organization doesn’t provide any mechanism to stop a process if one see a problem with the process — no Andon cord in management and HR processes!

Galaxies digitized the nervous system of an organization. We are also providing a virtual Andon cord that can be pulled (or pushes) by anyone involved in the process. Galaxies enables you to create a virtual and dynamic nervous system that fits your needs and focus on notifying and including all stakeholders. Our virtual nervous system also allows us to provide a virtual Andon cord that any participant in the virtual process can pull to stop a given process.