Walk on the lean side

Take a Gemba walk. If you’re not familiar with what a Gemba walk is, let me fill you in.

Gemba, which is Japanese for “the real place,” is a fundamental part of lean management and, basically, involves physically seeing what is happening in a facility.

I work for a company that is heavily into lean and, therefore, we frequently conduct Kaizen and rapid-improvement events. We also take 45-minute Gemba walks every Monday, Wednesday and Friday to evaluate our SQDC (safety, quality, delivery and cost) metrics.

Our continuous-improvement group includes process engineers, quality engineers, buyers, human resource and facilities personnel, the shop manager, the engineering manager and the director of operations. Typically, only a handful attend each walk, usually process and quality engineers, the shop manager and a buyer. However, at least once a week the other managers participate.

Each work cell has a 2 '×3 ' whiteboard that lists the SQDC categories. We typically walk to the first cell and meet the cell coordinator, who updates us about the previous day. This includes:

During the walks, we determine if any opportunities exist to increase production or if any obstacles prevent the associates from achieving their daily goals. There is a “newspaper” section on the boards to highlight any issues, such as safety, parts availability and fixtures. Anything that prevents workers from being successful in their cells is brought to our group’s attention. This shows a commitment on our part to help them succeed.

A cell’s specific goals are marked in black on the boards; the actual results are written in green if they were met and in red if they were not. This way, anyone walking through our shop can see how we are doing. The cell coordinators update the boards daily. The coordinators receive a scrap report, by cell, every weekday morning from the quality department after our group’s material review board meeting, where we review all scrap items from the day before. This is used to fill in the quality chart on the board.

After the Gemba walk, we typically have some key takeaways. Perhaps we’re producing too much or too little inventory or have too much scrap or rework. Frequently, we uncover vendor issues, which cause poor delivery. The leadership team can then adjust production accordingly. We can try and find the causes of our scrap and rework, and the buyers can question the vendors as to why deliveries are late. Afterwards, we can get back to the cell coordinators and let them know what we’ve uncovered.

No matter how large or small the company, it can gain insights and produce results with regular Gemba walks. A large company may conduct a daily Gemba walk, while a small company may only need a weekly one. The object is to visit the shop floor and talk to the people who are running the machines or assembling the products. CTE