Performing a daily gemba walk has long been identified as the means for leaders to understand and identify waste in the production process. From my experience, however, there are some crucial errors in how most gemba walks are structured resulting in false perceptions surrounding productivity levels and achievement of customer value.
Now before you pick up your steel-toed safety shoes and throw them at me, consider for a moment how a gemba walk is typically structured, which is as a predetermined pathway through the frontlines. Herein lies the problem. To ensure the gemba walk generates the foresights and ideas it is intended to, it’s key that the pathway is not predetermined. Each and every time the walk is performed, it should venture a different path, speaking with different people and searching for different ideas.
If gemba walks are not part of your daily or weekly regimen today, read on and I will tell you why you should be using gemba walks, and more importantly exactly how to ensure they provide the valuable connection with the frontlines that you need. If on the other hand you are performing gemba walks today, read on and I am sure you will find some fresh ideas on how to increase their value.
I’ve already mentioned the importance of a different pathway for each and every walk, now let’s talk about some more specific details you can apply to increase the value of your gemba walks… Are you ready? Let’s put on our walking shoes.
Predictability
Most gemba walks are typically done first thing each morning; and that’s understandable. They offer leaders a great opportunity to assess how the day has started; identifying any issues or challenges that may impact the day’s production or throughput. The problem however is that this is too predictable. Ask yourself, if you knew the boss took a walk each and every morning around 9 a.m., would you make sure you were up and running with the area tidy by that time? Most likely. To truly understand the frontline operations, a gemba walk time should vary and never follow a predictable schedule. The less predictive you are, the more you will learn about what is actually happening in the frontlines.
Investigation
I followed a client on one of their gemba walks recently and found it interesting that the only interaction they made with employees was to say “hello.” Small talk provides no value and even less insight. The intent of a true gemba walk is to investigate, uncover and understand how the frontlines are offering value to the business and the customer. This in turn requires plenty of questions, discussions and even offside meetings to dig further into issues that have been identified. The more questions, the better. The intent is not to make employees feel interrogated, though they likely will when you begin to ask more questions. Over time however they will become accustomed to it. Make sure your questions, similar to your walk times, are unpredictable. Avoid asking the same questions every day. We want to move away from predictability and towards increased communication.
Outcomes
What do you do with the information collected during gemba walks? If the answer is “very little,” then you are missing a significant opportunity. By applying the concepts above, we learn more about the operation, the people and the complexities of our customers’ needs. It’s important; actually it’s imperative that we take our discussions beyond simple questions. The information obtained during a walk will lead to new ideas and opportunities to improve productivity and performance. These are the seedlings to innovation. In one instance, I recommended to a client that he have his production manager make the walk with him each day, noting important items for follow-up discussions and investigation. Some of these items were logged for future considerations; others became the initial ideas that led to kaizen events. The key to attaining value from gemba walks is to capture the information, and then do something with it.
If you want a reason to get on the shop floor each morning to assess production numbers and say hello to staff, then go ahead. Just make sure that your gemba walk is a separate activity. Gemba stands for “the real place,” suggesting that your walk needs to cover the areas where the real value is derived. By changing up your approach to include the ideas above, you will find greater value in the activity, improve employee relationships and ultimately gain a greater understanding of how your business can be improved.
Now get out there and gemba!
Shawn Casemore is the founder and president of Casemore and Co. Incorporated, a consulting company helping organizations improve their operational performance. A recognized speaker and writer, you can learn more about Shawn and his company by visiting casemoreandco.com. © Shawn Casemore 2013. All rights reserved.
