On a recent trip to a market in southern China it occurred to me that there must be a thriving industry producing red ink in this country. By red ink I mean not financial losses but the literal wet and sanguine stuff that so much of the signage here seems

Visual controls must at the very minimum be unambiguous, and either indicate normal versus abnormal or to positively specify a problem condition in order to be useful. Ambiguous visual controls are a waste of print and only good as examples of visual management practices to avoid. I stumbled upon one

Always on the lookout for ambiguous visual controls, I spotted one today at the donut shop by our office during a stop for my morning coffee. These pastries which were clearly a tray of vintage 1970s Orange Shag Carpet donuts were misleadingly labeled as Spicy Dried Pork donuts. Buyer beware.

There is something sinister about a place that calls itself “the happiest place on earth”. How did they arrive at that superlative conclusion? Did they benchmark GNH (Gross National Happiness) against other locations on earth? Experience casts some doubts on this claim. First, most of the rides in this park

It appears that our local Hello Kitty store is low on stock of invisible pens. I only see one invisible pen in this display (or rather, don’t see it). I would hate to have the job of the invisible pen warehouseman on cycle counting day. Talk about an impossible job…

Peter Köves shared an amusing example of this ambiguous or perhaps downright dangerous visual control. When hiking in the countryside of South Limburg near the Dutch city of Maastricht, I stumbled upon this sign on the side of the path: The sign reads: “Watch out! Oak processionary caterpillar To prevent

I waited and waited but didn’t catch sight of any humped zebras making a run for it. I bet their crossing frequency plots out as a histograms with a bimodal distribution.

Thanks go out to Bill Sampson, a lean six sigma consultant and friend of mine for snapping this photo of an ambiguous visual control in an airport boarding area. This attempt at visual management raises more questions than it answers. What is the intended designation of “normal versus abnormal”? What

Visual controls must by definition be clear indicators of normal versus abnormal, go versus no go, okay versus not okay. The sign above isn’t at all bad compared to other ambiguous visual controls we’ve featured here, here and here in the past. It’s classified as ambiguous for several reasons. First,