Gemba Walks
Industry Week Best Plants Conference
Atlanta, GA
Jim Womack, Senior Advisor, Lean Enterprise Institute
April 5, 2011
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Who Am I?
Founder and CEO of LEI, 1997-2010.
Senior Advisor to new CEO John Shook.
Author, mostly recently of Gemba Walks.
Gemba walker to grasp the situation and
learn! (Go see, ask why, show respect.)
Happy to be here, after gemba walks at
two of the IW Best Plant winners.
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Who Are You?
Line managers in manufacturing
operations.
Leaders and members of process
improvement teams (staffs).
Leaders and members of various
vertical functions: IT, HR, product
engineering, finance, purchasing, etc.
Andconsultants.
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Gemba Walks
A management practice to grasp the
situation before taking action
ACTION
CHECK
STUDY
PLAN
DO
GRASP the SITUATION
HYPOTHESIS
TRY
REFLECT
ADJUST
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Gemba Walks
Where?
What?
Why?
How?
Who?
When?
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Where?
On the gemba: The place where value is
created; where value-creating work is done:
Primary:
Engineering
Operations
Customer support
Support (incidental work):
Line management
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What?
A horizontal journey along a value stream
(a value creating process) across
departments, functions, and organizations
to facilitate:
A transformational leap in performance.
Sustainable improvement through PDCA.
Coaching the next generation of line
managers and improvement staffs.
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Why?
Organizations are vertical & complex, but
Value flows horizontally across
organizations to customers.
Managers look up toward the top (the CEO)
for direction, but
All value is created at the bottom where the
actual work is done.
A gemba walk helps managers see and
reconcile the horizontal with the vertical.
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How?
The unit of observation is a value creating
process a product family value stream.
A process is simply a sequence of actions
that must be taken correctly in the correct
order at the correct time to create value
for some customer.
All horizontal processes flow through
vertical processes in a value creating
system: Action, process, system.
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How?
Select a value stream. (Any primary or
support stream will do.)
Gather everyone touching the value
stream and talk a walk together.
Ask about:
Purpose (solve the customers problem)
Process (how it actually works)
People (how they are engaged in creating,
sustaining & improving the process)
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How?
Draw a current state [Link] not,
depending on the circumstances.
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Current-State Value Stream
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How?
The objective of a gemba walk is not to
draw a map, or to solve a specific
problem, or to Plan or Do or Check or Act.
It is to grasp the situation by involving
everyone touching the process to
understand purpose, process, and people.
Once the situation is understood
improvement is possible and more likely
to succeed.
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Who? (The Hard Part)
Ideally, the CEO and COO with the
function heads, customers, suppliers, and
value stream leader!
More realistically, the value stream leader
and those directly touching the stream.
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Who? (The Hard Part)
But today
The CEO and COO usually lack both
knowledge and courage.
There is no person responsible for the
performance of most value streams
a value stream leader.
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Who?
How about you?
The operations manager for a facility.
The product line manager.
The head of the improvement team.
The purchasing manager looking up
stream.
The sales manager looking down
stream.
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When?
Before commencing a lean
transformation in a value stream.
Multiple times a year for each value
stream to refresh gemba knowledge
and keep the management team
focused on cross-functional problems.
Weekly or daily to grasp the changing
situation in real time.
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An Example of the Latter
A daily management gemba walk for the
senior executive and the function heads:
The 8 am walk through the fulfillment
value stream to asses the situation.
The 10 am walk across all verticals to
address value stream issues in real time.
Note: An obeya meeting in a product
development process is another form of a
cross-departmental gemba walk.
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Gemba Walks
The best way to truly grasp your
situation as an organization as a
community of value creation so that
good, lean things can happen.
A practice you can learn by practice
and continually learn from practicing.
