Boards on Fire: A game changer for Operational Excellence Leaders

Long-term performance is built on clear direction, fact-based decisions, and follow-up that truly drives action. When strategy and daily operations go hand in hand, the organization becomes both stable and ready to grow.

As an Operational Excellence Lead, the mission is to translate goals into concrete ways of working and measurable results. This means turning strategy into structured processes, defining relevant KPIs, and ensuring a follow-up framework that drives the right behaviors. By clarifying responsibilities, analyzing problems, and standardizing workflows, both transparency and efficiency are strengthened.

At the same time, day-to-day operations are often characterized by competing priorities, fragmented information, and improvement initiatives that lose momentum over time. In this context, the role becomes critical in creating focus, maintaining direction, and ensuring that change efforts do not stop at ambition but result in lasting improvements.

Common challenges for Operational Excellens Leaders

1. Unclear priorities.
   Employee engagement and ideas are valuable, but when many initiatives run simultaneously, it becomes difficult to determine what matters most. This can lead to resources being spread too thin, projects losing momentum, and improvements failing to reach their full potential.
   
   
2. Inaccessible and fragmented data.
   Organizations relying on analog ways of working often have information scattered across different systems and documents, making it difficult to gain a comprehensive overview. Follow-up becomes more challenging, decisions become less data-driven, and improvements risk being delayed.
   
   
3. Lack of execution power in improvement work.
   When daily operations take over, improvement initiatives tend to lose momentum. Without clear ownership and structured follow-up, efforts risk fading out.
   
   
4. Inconsistent ways of working.
   Teams following different routines, combined with unclear communication around processes, create inefficiencies and inconsistent quality. A lack of shared standards makes both follow-up and the scaling of improvements more difficult.

How Boards on Fire Helps You Eliminate Your Challenges

With the goal of making governance simpler, clearer, and more data-driven for roles such as Operational Excellence Lead, Boards on Fire offers a digital solution for daily management. The tool enables organizations to track goals, visualize KPIs, and drive improvements in real time.

Below are some concrete examples of how Boards on Fire supports daily operations:

1. Clear ownership and stronger communication
   Unclear priorities and lack of communication can make it difficult for teams to understand what matters most. Boards on Fire visualizes goals, results, and actions digitally in real time, strengthens accountability, and makes it easy for everyone to see who is responsible for what and which initiatives should be prioritized.
   
   
2. Real-time follow-up that drives fast action
   Boards on Fire consolidates KPIs, deviations, and results in one place in real time. Issues become visible immediately, decisions can be made faster, and follow-up becomes clear and structured.
   
   
3. Standardized ways of working across teams and departments
   Inconsistent routines between teams create inefficiencies and variations in quality. Boards on Fire provides a shared structure with aligned KPIs, meeting formats, and follow-up processes across the organization. This facilitates benchmarking, knowledge sharing, and more predictable ways of working.
   
   
4. Continuous improvement that truly gets implemented
   Limited execution power means many initiatives never reach completion. Boards on Fire connects ideas and improvement proposals directly to KPIs and deviations, assigns clear ownership, and ensures structured follow-up. Improvements become part of everyday operations rather than one-off initiatives.

Customer Case: Assa Abloy

For many organizations, including Assa Abloy in Mölnlycke, challenges such as unclear priorities, inaccessible data, limited execution power, and inconsistent ways of working are common obstacles in improvement efforts. However, after their sister site in Eskilstuna implemented Boards on Fire’s digital solution for daily management and quickly saw results, Mölnlycke decided to follow suit.

We first heard about Boards on Fire through our sister site in Eskilstuna, which had already implemented the tool. What caught our attention was the opportunity to replace multiple systems and manual tools with one shared digital platform where everything, from deviations and improvements to KPIs, is automatically updated and reflected across departments, says Sascha Sager, Operational Excellence Lead at Assa Abloy.

Since the implementation, communication between shifts has become clearer and collaboration across departments has improved, reducing the impact of inconsistent ways of working. All information related to improvement activities—such as 5S checklists, waste walks, and improvement ideas—is managed directly within Boards on Fire. Each activity follows the PDCA principle and is traceable from start to completion, ensuring sustainable execution and higher quality in improvement work.

Thanks to the digital platform, the ten team leaders in Mölnlycke save approximately three hours per week each. Previously, manual updates across multiple systems were required, which was both time-consuming and made prioritization more difficult. Now, all data is consolidated in one place—always updated and accessible to both shift managers and operators. The result is faster decision-making, improved follow-up, and clearer, more standardized governance across the entire factory.

In addition, Assa Abloy has established centralized Operational Excellence boards where site-wide KPIs are monitored in real time, providing full visibility and making improvement work even more data-driven and effective.

Tips and Lessons for Other Organizations

For organizations aiming to gain better control over daily management, some key takeaways include:

• Define clear KPIs that reflect both strategic goals and process performance.
• Make responsibilities and ownership explicit for every improvement action.
• Consolidate information in one place to reduce fragmented data and increase transparency.
• Follow up consistently to ensure improvements maintain momentum over time.

Use adaptable daily management boards to support changing needs.

For an Operational Excellence Lead, the ability to apply established improvement methodologies such as Lean, Six Sigma, 5S, PDCA, and Kaizen is essential. These frameworks enable structured execution, root cause analysis, and measurable impact.

Boards on Fire makes it easy to implement and follow up on these methodologies digitally. The platform connects activities to responsible owners, visualizes progress in real time, and ensures that improvements—whether related to 5S initiatives, Kaizen activities, or PDCA cycles—are tracked and executed consistently. This enables standardization across teams and departments, making improvement work both structured and sustainable.

Explore our different boards and learn how they create impact here!

Summary

Long-term performance relies on clear priorities, follow-up that drives action, and standardized ways of working. Digital visual management with Boards on Fire makes this a reality: all goals and improvements are visible, responsibilities are clear, data is accessible, and teams can act faster.

The result is sustainable improvements, more effective decision-making, and a more aligned organization.