Problem / Countermeasure board

There's a cool Lean tool that again I learned from KM&T which is called a Problem / Countermeasure board.

This is a visual management tool using an A3 or whiteboard, etc. that has headings similar to the following:

Owner | Problem | Containment | Countermeasure | Target Date | Status

The structure is simple because what we're targeting here is daily kaizen, all the little problems that happen day-to-day.  Containment is about immediate workarounds.  Countermeasure is about what we determine should be done after root cause analysis (e.g. 5 Whys) to fix the problem permanently.  Status should follow PDCA.

The rules are also simple.  When there's a problem, write it up on the board.  Make the problems explicit to encourage us to deal with them.

A key point is that this is not a "whining wall".  When you write up the problem, you are signing up to champion the effort.  And the people signing up should be the operators (aka people doing the work), not managers.