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: