Infographics

The goal of an infographic is to simplify a complex subject, making the information quickly and clearly understandable to the target audience.

An infographic is often referred to as "artwork for the brain".  It's a way of taking numbers, spreadsheets, and all kinds of technical data and turning it into a visual that is interesting to look at and easy to digest.

When an infographic is intended for a general audience, the focus is often on making it as entertaining as possible.  When the audience is more specific, such as employees or customers, the primary goal is usually clarity.

Infographics are the perfect way to document the procedures that you need everyone to understand and to follow.  Give one person a multi-page procedure and another a single page flowchart.  Which person do you think will have an easier time executing that procedure correctly?

Training materials are much more likely to be used by people when they are back on the job if those materials consist primarily of infographics, not text.

Example:  Sourcing Strategy

This example includes some of the infographics from a procedure detailing the methodology for developing an organization's sourcing strategy and for making individual Make/Buy decisions.  The purpose of the infographic above is to help put the key questions into the context of competitive advantage and business risk for those setting the strategy.  It identifies the risks and advantages inherent in each situation, focusing on...

The 5 key questions that identify the best available sourcing option with the inherent risks and advantages. 

The 13 practical combinations of answers to those 5 questions.

The best available decision given each of the 13 possible combinations

Moving clockwise from the six o’clock position increases a company’s competitive advantage.

Moving counterclockwise from six o’clock increases the risks to product quality, cost, and delivery.

The graphics below are aids for supply chain teams as they work through specific sourcing decisions.

No company can afford to create everything necessary to deliver the products and services it sells.  And no company can afford to teach its suppliers how to become its competitors.  Finding the optimal operating position between these two extremes is the purpose of a robust sourcing strategy. 

REASONS TO OUTSOURCE:

1. Capacity:  We can’t make the item or easily acquire the capability to make it.
   
2. Manufacturing Competitiveness:  A supplier has a meaningful advantage - lower cost, faster availability, etc., - for a directly substitutable item.
   
3. Technology:  A supplier’s version of the item is superior in performance for any of several possible reasons. 
   

REASONS NOT TO OUTSOURCE:

1. Competitive Knowledge:  The item is crucial to the product’s performance, or the skill to produce it has been judged basic to our company’s technical memory.
   
2. Customer Perception and/or Market Differentiation:  We need to make what matters most to our customers and what differentiates our products in the marketplace.
   
3. Schedule:  Successful execution in the face of a tight timeline and incomplete information makes internal sourcing the lowest risk option.
   
4. Enable Growth/Maintain Critical Skills:  We need to maintain a critical level of specific experienced skills in-house in order to execute quickly and successfully on new programs as the business grows.