If you’re familiar with lean and you try to talk about it with others it is most of the time reduced on eliminating the 7 types of waste and people are feeling great when they know what TIMWOOD stands for. Don’t get me wrong it is great to have some knowledge and visibility out there but the downside is that it often leads to a quick end on taking action.
The key of lean is to fulfill the customer’s expectations and not reduce overproduction or WIP and all this by solving specific operational problems. The 7 kinds of waste are only the visible downside of weak or bad processes. They are only the symptoms but not the root cause.
This is always the tricky part in lean management. While it is mostly easy to identify waste it gets harder on seeing the root cause of waste in the process.
Let’s get to the Gemba Walk Trail
To get used to standardized problem solving in the first step is to go to the place of action. You can discuss problems as much as you want but when you don’t get yourself to see it, it is worthless. This is where the Gemba Walk comes in the game. Gemba is a Japanese Term (well surprise in the lean world) and stands for the place where it actually happens. This can be everywhere and everything in the process chain, starting from typing in customer orders over work stations on the shop floor where you actually add value on something to the fulfillment process in your outbound warehouse.
Key of Gemba is not to talk in wild theories or totally abstract about problems, but to have a look where it occurs and discuss them on site (looking at the process in the real world, get rid of unnecessary power points and excel sheets! Nobody cares anyway!) Too often we want to believe the statement of a “pro” and forget about it instead of going there and have a look ourselves to gain a better understanding of the problem and make up our own opinion.
But above the pure problem solving it is about continuous improvement and the never ending journey of learning.
The question that might raise now is: What do I have to look for?
For this more rhetorical question are countless answers. Just google Gemba in the WWW and you will find plenty of sources and recommendations on where to start and what to look for. Some points that are always included are:
- What is our standard? What should be and what is?
- Can the person doing the job explain me the standard?
- What is the person doing and what is he/she doing deviating from the standard to make it easier?
- Why do have a deviation?
- Do we need more material in the process?
- Do we need less machinery in the process?
- Can we do it with less resources?
- Are there waiting times?
- Do we have defective parts coming in or out the process?
- Are we producing defective goods?
- How can we identify defects?
- Are all documents up to date?
- What indicators are used/observed and how are they visualized?
- And so on…
As you can see, there is a countless number of questions you can ask yourself and your employees during a Gemba Walk. Each of these questions is correct, important and have a right to be asked. But don’t even think about creating an audit checklist and ask always the same.
To bring it together
Stop thinking upfront what you want to achieve with a Gemba Walk, like improving a specified process, think about Gemba Walks in first place to gain a better understanding of the process flow and start from there making your way down to the root cause of problems in the process. As already mentioned this narrows it down to three simple questions:
- What should happen?
- What is happening?
- Explain why!
Finally, use the chance during Gemba Walks and try to find improvements for visualization at the process. Even if you are not conducting a Gemba Walk – when you’re passing by and clearly see that something is wrong you have the chance to go straight in.
In the end it is all about time and we all know time is money.
