Visual Management - color indication

I have so many readers out of Hong Kong, but I believed that many of them travel to Hong Kong before. Do you know how many color used on the taxi in Hong Kong? The answer is "3".

Red color taxi are running in Kowloon and Hong Kong Island.

Green color taxi are running in New Territory.

Blue color taxi are running in Lantau Island.

Kowloon and Hong Kong Island is the urban district in Hong Kong, so the license and management fee of taxi is the highest. Offcause, the daily income and the rental charge of the red taxi driver is also highest. The green color taxi are running in New Territory and the density of client is lower than the red color taxi in urban district, at the same way, the license fee is also lower than red color taxi. Blue color taxi are only running in Lantau Island. The density of client is the lowest.

Many decade before, somebody in the colonial government felt there was trouble to seperate into three colors. They needed three sets of management rules and team to control. They suggested to combine all the color into red. Some councilors rejected the suggestion and gave their comment. Three colors of taxi is using to solve the problem of traffic jam. The highest population is in urban district, all the taxi from new territory will all move to Kowloon or Hong Kong Island to earn money. The citizen in New Terrritory may not take the taxi because it will be no taxi there, and the citizen in Urban District may not take the taxi too because all the traffic will jam. At that moment, there was no brigde connecting Lantau Island to urban district yet, but the truth is compatable too. The color indication is using to control the traffic flow.

In order to make the rule success, there is another important factor needed. Discipline, in Hong Kong, no matter the driver or citizen would call police to complain if they saw a green taxi running in urban district. Most of people has the sense of discipline, this is the most important element for the success. In the progress of kaizen, we are needed to focus on build up the lean culture as well. The culture would form the discipline and make the people to follow the change.

When we apply the tools of lean to our working environment, there are so many sample existed around of us for using. Sometime, use the actual sample in the real world to intruct the concept is more easier than list the samples from the text book, because those story is too far away from the people and they are hard to understand the matter they never saw. Therefore, keep watching the world and learn from it.