Let’s Explore How Vinyl Chart Tape Can Improve your Workspace.
Every once in a while a product or tool comes along so powerful that it has the potential to completely revolutionize the way you do business, turn old preconceptions over on their heads, and bring you into the future as an innovator in your market. Admittedly, vinyl chart tape might not exactly be one of these… BUT, it comes closer than you might think, and it should have a place in your office just the same. As one of the potential unknowns in the workplace planning and organizing world, I don’t think this handy little tool gets the recognition it deserves. Let’s take a look at the 6 reasons that vinyl chart tape should already be playing a role in your workspace.
6 Reasons Vinyl Chart Tape is Must
1. Regular tape just can’t compare: We don’t want to hate on poor ol’ regular tape too much, but there are some jobs that vinyl tape is just better suited for. While regular common tape varieties and brands are meant to be jacks-of-all-trades, vinyl chart tape has a few specific purposes and it excels at fulfilling each and every one of them.
2. Variety: Because vinyl tape is so often used in charting, plotting, and sectioning off various cells and diagrams, it is easy to get a hold of exactly the product you need for any given purpose. Widths, for example, are variable, as are the colors your can order in. This might not seem like much at first, but being able to color code a project is one of the oldest, most effective visual tricks in the book. That said, the classic ½ inch black vinyl tape can handle a lot of jobs on its own!
3. Whiteboards will thank you: As many vinyl tape charts are created on whiteboards, this is definitely a big one. When creating a chart, be it for training purposes in the boardroom or for worker usage in the hall, one of the most important factors boils down to how easy it is to update information. In the digital age, the click of a mouse or the tapping of a single key can update information quickly and without incident, giving it a distinct advantage in that department over physical displays. Because of this, when big, bold charts in the real world do have their place, you want to make re-writing or updating information as easy of a task as possible.
Vinyl chart tape achieves this in a couple of different ways. First of all, when placed on a whiteboard, you create semi-permanent cells that won’t smudge or distort when workers are erasing written information within a cell. This alone gives them an edge over any chart which has simply been drawn straight onto a board, saving you and your workers time and hassle. Secondly, “semi-permanent” doesn’t mean permanent, so when you need to change a chart or display, you can often remove and then place new tape strips with minimal obstructive residue being left behind.
Don’t want to have to deal with ink and erasing altogether? Using magnets as cell markers or placeholders along with a vinyl tape-created chart can turn any magnetic surface, whiteboard or not, into a sleek, low-maintenance chart.
4. Employee organization couldn’t be easier: As a young child, I remember a teacher who used a tape-made chart on the blackboard to keep track of which children had misbehaved each day. Do something you shouldn’t, and you’d get an X in one of the squares next to your name; get three “strikes,” and you were out for the day. When I went to work in one of my first jobs, our manager had us display our week’s work schedule on a similar whiteboard so everyone could see what shifts were covered and plan their own schedules accordingly. While the system changed and became a bit less elementary, the principle in these two instances, to create simple, visual management tools, followed me through multiple stages of life. You can really let your imagination run wild here, as anything that would help to increase passive communication and organization between managers, workers, and any other affected parties is fair game, and can likely be achieved without all that much trouble.
5. People are visual: For training and learning purposes, most people are visual learners and absorb concepts and knowledge much quicker having things shown rather than simply told to them. For this reason, you should consider using various tape colors to block out concepts in your training sessions. Not only are workers likely to learn concepts faster, but being able to associate a procedure as a “red box” concept, or a certain material to be sorted as a “blue bin” item, can help to drastically increase long-term retention as well.
6. Lean applications: If you’re a follower of Lean business practices, you might already have some ideas how visual cues could help you continually improve your workplace in terms of productivity and flow. For example, you might use vinyl tape to create a chart that lays out your Kanban cards in an easy to understand fashion. Charts can also be used to track defects, worker improvement suggestions from employers, and more.
As you’ve hopefully got a better idea now, vinyl chart tape is a versatile tool that can likely be applied to your own business in a number of ways. Where you go with it now, is entirely up to you!
Additional Resources
- Tool Storage Ideas– creativesafetysupply.com
- Vinyl Chart Tape – Ways To Improve Your Workplace– safetyblognews.com
- The Benefits of Economy Vinyl Tape– heavydutyfloortape.com
- 5S Vinyl Floor Tape– aislemarking.com
- Floor Tape and Vinyl Labels Whips Maintenance Room Into Shape– blog.creativesafetysupply.com
- LabelTac Tape in the Workplace– bridge-to-safety.com
- 6 Reasons to Invest in a Visual Workplace– creativesafetypublishing.com
- Adhesive Vinyl Tape– blog.5stoday.com
- The Impact of Floor Tape on Efficiency in the Workplace– floor-marking-tape.com