What is a Gemba Walk?

Gemba walk , in simple words is a form of “Management by Walking Around” (MBWA).  This is a very powerful tool as it is based on the fundamental principles of lean known as the ” 3G’s of lean ” as listed below. Gemba walk provides a first-hand unpolluted information about your Processes, Products and People.

3 G’s of Lean

Gemba – “The actual place”. This a place of actual work where the value is created

Gembutsu – “The thing”. Products or things which we are interested to improve.

Genjitsu – “The facts”. The real facts that are happening at the place of interest

I like to call Gemba walk as Management by walking around because it allows you to do just that. A 15 minutes Gemba walk has proved to be more effective in resolving flow interrupters for delivery than having hour long status meetings far away in the comfort of the office with unreliable data. When you are out there on the Gemba looking at the actual process, products and people responsible for them, there is no doubt about anything ,  no one can fabricate false information, you can interact with the process owner to resolve problems more quickly. This also helps all the Line Managers to align their priorities to solve problems for more efficient flow of the products through the value stream.

Few things to keep in mind to make this a successful tool:

- Have a clear theme and agenda for the walk

- prepare a list of questions to ask

- Setup a display board for each workstation which help process owner to answer question you will be asking

-  Have the top-most management do Gemba walk along with you at least during the initial phase, that way everyone know that we are serious about improvement

- Be disciplined never miss the gemba walk

- Make sure resources are made available to resolve issues discovered during the walk

- make sure the account abilities are clear and everyone responsible completes their task

Gemba walk  will be a good management tool as long as you use it properly. It can be used to serve various purposes. I will share more about my experiences in later posts. Till then if you have any questions or you need to know  anything  in particular about its implementation and application…. just leave a comment below.

As a person who is leading a lean transformation project it is very likely you will sometimes be frustrated thinking nothing is working and people are not changing. Change is a process so subtle sometimes you need skill beyond normal to detect progress. Inability of detecting it and worse being frustrated is but only harmful for the progress of the change process.

The speed of change is dependent on many things like how much people are educated about lean tools, involvement of management, and above all the crisis is the biggest catalyst for change. A good leader will not panic in crisis but will effectively use it to develop and motivate his team to accelerate the change process.

It may not be always possible to accelerate the change process. This is when you need patience and some skills to keep everyone on track. It is very important to know how the change occurs. I did try to explain my understanding in this article “Understanding change” . I don’t want get too much into the psychology of the change , it will be beyond the scope of this post and also because I am not an authority on that subject. Here is an example. We were trying to take control on our shop floor process which were in total chaos. Nobody new cycle time for any operation. There was no standard work, no production plan and many more problems.  It took over a year to completely turn the ship around and it is still changing and improving. We knew what should be the end product but to get there it was not straight forward and many times people did loose faith ,but still had keep it going. At first making people just do things and keeping them aligned daily through gemba walks then slowly doing led to believing. It is a interesting process to see how people start taking responsibility after doing something which they initially did not believe in.

Actually a post “Learning to Learn” by Evan Durant inspired me to write this. This topic has always intrigued me and have read my share blogs posts, books to satisfy my curiosity. I would like to share my experiences and experiments on this process and learn what others have done. I will briefly explain my philosophy and tools to slay this dragon!

The Philosophy of Learning:

Learning is not possible unless there is creative tension. Imagine a place where everyone agrees, they will never learn new things and grow. For this to be possible you need the right people and right environment. Right people are the one who questions the status quo and are not afraid constructive criticism. This is a tough team to have they will always keep you on your toes. The environment or conditions that will lead to learning  are explained more in detail in my post “The 8 Fold Path”. This is just my opinion but I believe most learning system will be composed of one or more similar building blocks.
The Tools:

Task Standard work & Leader Standard Work: We need to be able capture knowledge at process level and then link it to peoples tasks. The combination of task and leader standard work helps to achieve this. We had started to use this tools out of necessity for standardizing our tasks but learned it can be a effective learning tool when a new person joins a team or even for cross training. Task Standard work ensures all the tasks required to sustain a process are understood and captured thus providing reference point for future improvements. Leader Standard work ensures these tasks are performed by responsible individuals.In case of new person or cross training leader standard work helps the individual to do things religiously on daily basis till becomes a habit that helps him/her to do the job. The right habits helps develop right culture. Thus these tools if used properly can used to help people learn the culture of the organization. They are also good catch-ball mechanisms between the trainer and trainee.

More reading: “Leader Standard Work” , “Task Standard Work”

Gemba Walk: This is yet another catch-ball mechanism and very effective to get whole people on the team to align their thoughts and understanding. We cannot transfer what is there in our mind to somebody else’s  in an instant. We have to reinforce the idea again and again and how it implies in different scenarios till the other person understands its application and corrects any misunderstanding under the observation of the trainer. Every time the learner makes mistake the trainer is there to correct his path and realign their understanding. Several iterations of this during the gemba walks helps  everyone to learn  and align their ideas.

A3 Problem Solving: This is by far the most effective tool in teaching problem solving. It forces the learner to go through the PDCA cycle helping him to learn the systematic problem solving using scientific method. Second, the  catch-ball mechanism by which I mean every time the learner proposes a solution the trainer can send it back asking for  necessary fixes, and this cycle can go on till the best solution is reached.

Internal Training : We used to have weekly 30 min training for all the managers where anyone propose a training topic and present it. Mostly it would be one point lessons and sometimes games to show how one piece flow is better than batch. It was a fun way to learn and also a good opportunity for new managers to learn the skills of teaching in a safe environment.

Whatever you decide is your philosophy of learning or your tools, always remember to standardize the learning process so that any ineffective processes or steps can be improved or eliminated. We cannot learn the learning process without knowing what it is.

This is a scene at most of the businesses where the Business goals very rarely affect the day to day processes that run the organisation or any changes in the process realign the goals to new scenario.  People are usually left on their own to figure their way out of this situation. Here Business planing is considered as an annual activity and once done is set in stone or worse just completely forgotten during the rest of the year only to review again at the end of the year. You know you are one of them if you look back at last year and blame each other or somebody or something  for not reaching your targets.

For a business to achieve its goals and be successful it needs to agile and continuously in sync with changing environments within and outside the organisation.

To achieve this agility we need to have a system which aligns our People to Processes, which in turn are aligned to our Business goals on Day to Day basis. It works both ways as everything works in sync like gears where change in one gears rotation or speed will proportionally change the others.

Visually this looks very simple but practically implementing this is a challenging but I believe is not impossible. Especially if you already have tools to standardize processes (Task Standard Work) and People ( Leader Standard Work ). We will discuss this more in detail in the next post on this topic.

This is a simple tool that we used initially for the purpose of documenting sustaining the processes we had setup. It can also be used for aligning   processes to the top level strategy of the company.

Most organizations will have following basic processes:

• Operations
• Supply
• Management
• Customer Relation
• Product Development

These are any processes which have to be done routinely to sustain the business.They may each have several tasks done by different people. For example :

Process : Operations

Tasks :

• Shipping
• Production Planing
• Maintenance

The purpose of the Task Standard work is to standardize the various routine routine tasks required to sustain the processes which run the business

Here is an example showing the TASK STANDARD WORK of the SHIPPING Task:

These actions on the Task standard work will be transferred to each persons Leader Standard Work. Thus any changes made to sustain a task can be integrated each persons day to day work. This also provides the work content of each task and if you have total work content of all the processes recorded then it will help you identify minimum number people required to sustain the organisation.

How many times have you sucessfully implemented change using lean tools only to realize, after few weeks or months, that the manager and other people  have either reverted back to the old methods or have found ways to circumvent the newly established methods.

We learned the hard way that lean transformation cannot be supported and sustained with  traditional management system

Most of the times traditional management is results driven and may not focus on the process. Thus there is no inherent  motivation for the manager to improve the process. Also when lean tools are applied  this type of management does not provide a sustainable system to integrate, improve and sustain changes with daily feedback to realign to solve problems as they arise.

The “Lean Management” provides the framework to drive the lean culture. As identified by David Mann in his book “Creating Lean Culture“, there are 4 elements that makeup the Lean Management:

1. Leader  Standard Work

2. Daily Accountability

3. Visual Controls

4. Discipline

Leader Standard Work sustains the systems integrates the changes made during the transformation process. Visual Control and Daily Accountability helps keep the process and people aligned to solve problems as they arise. The Discipline of the leader ensures that standard work is followed and the whole system works coherently.

I was reading “Audit Vs. leader Standard Work” by Mark Rosenthal and I suddenly realized what potential we have created at our work place.

Over the course of the year we have grown very fond of the audits. Especially for 5S and we are developing audits  for maintaining other lean management systems put in place. So far they worked fine and actually helped us to stay on track and also creating in culture of continuous improvement. So you may be wondering why that is bad?

As Mark explains Audits are snapshot and often people will try to fool the system to be good for the audit but bad on other days when there is no audit. Now I wondered why it was not realized at our place?

The reason for this was simple , we had unknowingly incorporated that in our Gemba Walks. This ensured continuous followup of all the set systems on daily basis. This was an important move,  addressing to issues as we walk through the workstation was part of our Leader Standard Work (LSW). This kept the systems in check on day to day basis, for example an operator was informed about parts without any designated place immediately when it was seen rather then waiting to conduct the audit.

This has inspired me to think of new system where in we will no longer need audits as we will do bit of checking everyday by enabling it through LSW of responsible people.

Some things which helps to achieve this goal :

1. Try to break down big monthly tasks into smaller weekly  tasks , similarly weekly to daily tasks.

2. Use knowledge gained from issues of shop floor modify LSW to fit systems put in place to avoid these issue in future

3. Even if you have to use audits initially , make them stricter , raise the bar up as people start getting better

4. be disciplined to resolve issues  immediately rather than waiting for the next formal  audit

I am hoping to learn more by looking at audits and leader Standard work from this Perspective and ultimately be able to stay away from audits  by taking a bite a day using the Leader Standard work.

5S is often misunderstood as just a mere housekeeping tool. Impact of having a successful 5S system is more profound than just keeping the place clean.

5S is the starting point of any lean transformation and forms a catalyst for culture of change. Due to the very visible results it makes the process of buy-in easy for both the shopfloor personnel and Management.

some of the key points why 5s forms the foundation of lean manufacturing is as follows:

• Standardisation of process provide a stable base for incremental improvement
• Visible results helps boost morale of the people who then take pride working in this area
• Is an enabler of Continuous Improvement culture
• Prepares the workplace and people for implementing other Lean tools like TPM, SMED etc.

5S implementation may sound easy but in reality it may be very complex and even more complex is how to sustain it. Not being able to sustain 5S is one of the biggest reason for failure any lean implementation project. Properly sustained 5s program helps continuously improve the workplace and shows managements commitment to the whole change process.  Leader Standard Work is one of the way to sustain 5S and new control measures developed by implementing 5S.

I want to share a simple way of writing Elevator speech which I learened while attending one of the seminars conducted by Tom Pryor at TMAC. I always had a difficulty in writing one, which really caught peoples attention. After searching for great examples of elevator speeches on google, I was still clueless till  I found this method.

Let us understand the anatomy of any Elevator speech. Basically there are 3 parts for an Elevator Speech:

1. Grabbing attention by explaining whose  problem you are trying to solve and will usually begin with :

“Do you know how difficult it is for CNC Machinists replace parts of their old machines?”

2. Explaining what you do to solve the problem and will usually look something like this:

” We provide OEM quality replacement parts  for  wide variety of CNC Machines at half the price”

3. Then you must give them the reason to believe , why they should come to you solve their problem. this will usually look somewhat like this:

” So that you can double the life of your machines at half the cost”

Now putting it all together:

“Do you know how difficult it is for CNC Machinists replace parts of their old machines?

We provide OEM quality replacement parts  for  wide variety of CNC Machines at half the price so that you can double the life of your machines at half the cost. ”

This is as simple as it can get but still if you need inspiration to write your own here is a link to some generic Elevator speech examples – Elevator Speech Examples

Often we need to see something of interest from differnt perspectives to get comprehensive understanding. The tools that allow us to see thing with different prespective is called a  “Lens”. This is very essential for a change agent involved in Transformation of a business.

Shingo Prize model offeres an excellent lens to view the transformation process. Let us first use typical Project management method as a lens. Using this you will view the transformation as different phases of the project mamngement:

1. Initiation
2. Planing
3. Execution and control
4. Closing

This will suffice if was just project management, but lean transformation goes beyond that. At strategic level we need to understand whether we have created a system which will be sustained with proper enablers in place. What most people don’t uderstand is that lean cannot be sustained if applied locally using few tools. It is has to be complete transformation of the entire system, the processes as well as the management system. Shingo prize model helps to identify what needs to be in place to strat this transformation (the cultural enablers) and then how the collective learning and implementaions of tools though out the system achive the goal of lean transformation, that is profitable business. Here are the phases of lean transformation as per Shingo Prize Model:

1. Cultural Enablers
2. Continuous Process Improvement
3. Consistent Lean Enterprise Culture
4. Business Results

If you are change agent trying to transform a business and have been wondering if you are on right track, step back look at the process using this lens.

You can read more about this at MissionModel