Read One More Report, or Go and See for Yourself? Do the Gemba Walk -

Production worker on the factory floor or gemba

• Get me that report ASAP!

Have you ever received a printed report that, when you read it and compared it to what you knew of the background situation, made you think “What’s wrong with this picture?”

The problem with reports is that too frequently they are inaccurate, shade the truth, and spin bad news into neutral news. Other than that,…

How do you get by that? The Toyota Production System (TPS) and Lean Six Sigma enterprise recommend a practice called “go and see.” One simple yet high-impact method to go and see is the gemba walk. Gemba is often translated as “The place where the work happens.” A gemba walk, then, really is about becoming much more familiar with the work and with the expert practitioners who perform that work every day. In the Lean Six Sigma literature, gemba most often refers to a manufacturing plant, because most of the techniques were developed in order to improve manufacturing operations. However, if you are a senior director or executive in a business, there is an associated gemba for which you are responsible, and it may not be a production line.

• Gemba Walk basics

So how do you accomplish a gemba walk, and is it different from going to the line or lab to ask someone a question, or giving someone an instruction when you pass her in the hallway? Glad you asked; here are 9 tips to get you started.

  1. Context is everything in determining what to look for when you go and see. There is no cookbook recipe or “How To” guide that is all-encompassing for any kind of workplace. My gembas have been as diverse as a manufacturing line, an electronics engineering lab, a potential supplier’s factory, and a firmware development workspace 6,000 miles from my home office.
  2. A day or two beforehand, Plan before you Do your first gemba walk, that is, follow the familiar first 2 steps in PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Adjust). Think about what you want to know, and write it down using an outline or bullet points, not a thesis. I like to write my bullets on the left half of a sheet of paper, leaving room for notes on the right half. I like pen and paper; use a tablet if you prefer.
  3. It’s important, so I’ll say that again. Write. It. Down. Don’t wing it.
  4. Refer to your outline during the gemba walk, then make detailed notes immediately afterward. Don’t wait a day to make notes – you will forget things. I suggest you not take notes while walking except one-word memory joggers; afterward, do a brain dump of what you experienced, using your written plan as a prompt. Recognize that if you did miss something (you probably did), then you have a good reason for another gemba walk next week.
  5. Prepare to have your prior assumptions about that particular gemba challenged, and be okay with that.
  6. Use your gemba walks to construct an “Is Map,” a depiction of the current state, instead of looking for “what to fix first.” An Is Map documents the situation that currently exists – process steps, people, flow, and other attributes – possibly including some less-than-optimum steps that can be the subject of kaizen initiatives over the coming weeks.
  7. Look and listen, don’t lecture people, and don’t prescribe. About the worst thing you can do during a gemba walk is to direct someone to change something on the spot that doesn’t match your preconceived belief about that process. One Big Exception: if you observe a blatant safety or security issue, that issue absolutely needs to be corrected immediately.
  8. Respect the viewpoints of the people who inhabit the gemba day-to-day. Whether they report to you, or they are your company’s supplier, or are otherwise related, open ended questions and non-judgmental responses will get you far more truth, and far less CYA-ing that needs to be interpreted or undone.
  9. Gemba walks are not “One and Done.” Do it again, many times, with different co-walkers, as part of the Study phase of your PDSA (Plan-Do-Study-Adjust) cycle.

• Gemba Walk Mastery

As the gemba walk becomes a routine part of your management toolkit, you will likely have an experience similar to one I had a few years back. After I had been in my job at the new company for about two months, one of the production workers commented to me, “You are the first director we ever had who came out to the floor every day to see how things are going, instead of to tell us something we’re doing wrong.”

When you build that level of trust in your gemba, you are far more likely to hear the truth, instead of spin, when something does go wrong.

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Dann Gustavson, PMP®, Lean Six-Sigma Black Belt, helps Program Managers and their teams achieve superior results through high-impact program execution. Prepare, structure, and run successful programs in product engineering, manufacturing operations (including outsourcing), and cross-functional change initiatives.

Contact Dann@Lean6SigmaPM.com.