As you may know, “Genba” which has been popularized as “Gemba” is a Japanese word meaning “the royal place”.
The word is widely used in Japan, where detectives frequently refer to crime scenes as genba, and Japanese television reporters often refer to themselves as genba/gemba reporters.
In business, gemba refers to the place where work is done and value is created. For example, in manufacturing, gemba is often the factory floor, but looking further afield, it can be any location—a construction site, back office, or sales bullpen—where the actual work is done.
When it comes to continuous improvement, problems are most visible in these areas, and the best ideas for improvement will come from visiting the gemba. If your goal is to identify waste, there is no substitute for ‘going to work’ and there are things that can only be learned by going there and looking at work with a purpose.
Therefore, a gemba walk, or waste ride, is an activity that brings management and other interested parties to the front line to look for waste and opportunities for improvement; Observe the work where the work is being performed and identify what goes wrong or could go wrong, how often it goes wrong or could go wrong, and the associated consequences. The waste walk is designed to help everyone understand the value stream and its issues; it is not for reviewing results and making superficial comments.
In addition to identifying the specific waste and gains made during waste walks, there are also higher level benefits associated with the practice:
- Commitment: Since people at all levels are involved, and since waste walks have proven to be an effective method of detecting hard-to-identify problems, as well as solutions that improve both productivity and the quality of daily work life, a remarkable increased workforce engagement is a common byproduct. People like it when problems they have known for a long time are finally solved!
- Confidence: Company leaders can establish higher levels of trust with those closest to the work, by showing interest and seeking the opinions and input of those who do the work.
- learn the truth: Going to gemba allows leaders to identify reality versus what they think (or expect) is happening. Waste walks also help leaders challenge their assumptions.
- best ideas: When the people who are doing the work or running the process every day start talking, thinking and feeling empowered, ideas really flow…
- ask the right questions: questions are often the “answer” to make breakthrough improvements. However, the quality of those questions is the key! Getting the data and seeing it for the first time based on direct observation is powerful; And then, if you can get customers, suppliers, and company staff to work all the way up the chain, the quality of the questions that come up will drive more innovative and accurate solutions.
- Improvement vs. Habit Forming Execution: The combination of fresh eyes, diverse perspective, amnesty, and a collective and sincere interest in eliminating waste and continually improving the work process tends to generate real, often innovative solutions; true improvement vs dong things in the same way.
Interestingly, scrap hauls have mostly taken place in manufacturing, warehouse, or shop settings; and there is certainly much to be gained by “going gemba” in these areas.
For example, during a scrap walkthrough in the manufacturing area, stakeholders focused on process limitations and identified various bottlenecks and ultimately solutions that increased overall capacity; In another similar environment, the gemba team was able to separate value-added work from non-value-added work, then created data images to document changes they believed would maximize the former and eliminate the latter.
Taking a slightly different twist, a manufacturer’s gemba team shortlists an issue each month, such as safety or process inefficiencies, and during the walk they look for activities or process steps that impact the issue.
However, while waste walks are most often practiced within the areas mentioned above, many of those carried out in other organizational areas have proven to be more valuable.
For example, a supply chain management company used waste tracks as a way to solve a recurring order processing problem that had become a hot topic at one of its mid-size customer locations. He involved several members of his team, including representatives from management, customer service, and his CI group. It worked so well that they now run waste drives at customer sites on a regular basis. Not only are the teams solving problems and making design changes in ways that benefit both parties, but their relationships with these customers have also grown significantly, increasing revenue and customer retention.
Building on the success of gemba, or scrap walks, at customer sites, the company recently began conducting them with suppliers and anticipates similar positive results.
Other companies send their employees to observe how their customers use their products and look for complexities, bugs, or problems that the products cause customers. Once this is done, employees can go back to their own gemba and see more opportunities for improvement.
In the retail sector, a company conducted a series of scrap walks during its inventory season, observing and documenting the process at different stores. While some of the best practices were certainly documented during waste visits at top-performing sites, the greatest gains were achieved during waste visits at traditionally poor performing stores, where, as As a result of the initiative, the average cycle time was reduced. to the half!
While waste walkways are less frequently used in areas where work is less visible, such as administrative offices, purchasing departments, and R&D labs, some of the best opportunities reside in these locations. When the work is less visible, the gemba or Waste Walk team needs to ask a lot more questions of the people doing the work to learn what they are doing and gain valuable information.
