Continuous Improvement is on the threshold of a new (video) era

I've been writing a series of blog articles about the ways in which video technology ... and especially surveillance video monitoring technology ... are poised to change the practice of continuous improvement in seismic ways.

Put simply, it is now cost-effective to mount continuous video surveillance over all of your key operations: Machines. Places. Movements. Operations. People. The required technology is now standard, reliable, performance is rocketing up, and costs are falling fast.

With this capability, you can turn back the clock and watch recent history as it actually happened ... in fine detail. You can see activities that are hidden or too fast for the human eye. You can measure key performance features. You can see far away or very close up.

And you don't have to plan or stage or organize "a shoot" for any of it. It is always there when you need to look it up. Just in time for Industry 4.0 :-)

Consider what the giants of operations management might done if they had access to this capability. Would Deming have found other ways to measure variation? Would Shingo have used it accelerate development of one-step changeovers? Would Imai have baked it into Kaizen events? Would Ohno have used it to watch, analyze and improve process flow?

Everything I am seeing, reading, testing and analyzing says that we are ready for wholesale application of video technology to the practice of continuous improvement.

What do you think?