The GEMBA walk
Before we went and had a Intro to 5S and I spoke about the five individual wastes of time I recommend to anyone wishing to tackle 5S themselves, hire my services or even just asking for some brotherly advice, to conduct a GEMBA walk around their production facilities. It will be time well spent and assist them in understanding their waste in totality. These are the instructions for the GEMBA walk. Let’s add some formality to the process.
By performing a self assessing GEMBA walk and writing down their observations, owners and senior management will maybe be asking themselves “what did I just witness, why do I see what I see and what do I do to repair it”.
But firstly what is this GEMBA thing?
GEMBA (現場) is another Japanese term used in many LEAN methodology’s and it means “actual place”.
If you are watching a visual media news program and have a reporter sitting at a desk you may pay attention but if the reporter is in the actual place where the news took place, you would normally pay greater attention. It is a better atmosphere being at any sporting event than watching it on television? Expectations are met and greater knowledge is gained when you are in the actual place.
Problems on the factory floor cannot be fixed in the boardroom or the corner office. Production problems can only be remedied when you are on the factory floor, in the actual place where those problems are occuring. Even when you think you have no problems, you will only be sure when you are in the actual place.
Pair your GEMBA with genchi gembutsu (go and see).
Implementing a 5 day, 12 minute assessment plan by conducting a GEMBA walk.
• Select a week when you will be in attendance at the work place from Monday to Friday.
• Arrange your time so that you arrive at work at the same time each day. (Don’t blame traffic if you can’t).
• Organise your time so that 30 minutes after you arrive at work, you can spend 12 minutes and only 12 minutes in the work area you want to assess.
• All you need are your eyes, a notepad and a pencil.
• Find a place in the work area where you are most likely not to be disturbed.
• Apart from common courtesies such as hello, good morning etc., do not engage in any conversation during this 12 minute period.
• Day 1 – Look around the work place and note if any workers seem to be wandering aimlessly or walking unnecessarily long distances to, collect equipment, b) return equipment or c) to get a drink, etc...
• Day 2 - Look around the work place and note if any workers are taking an unnecessarily long time searching for equipment. Are tools kept in closed/locked cupboards?
• Day 3 – Look around the work place and note if there are any operations or storage areas that would best be suited elsewhere.
• Day 4 - Look around the work place and note if there is an excess of inventory. This includes finished product, semi-finished product, raw materials and packing materials.
• Day 5 - Look around the work place and note if the workers are engaged in excessive bending, twisting or turning when performing their duties.
Carry out these observations and do not take more than the allocated 12 minutes per day.
· Each day, when you return to your office, sort out your notes. Estimate how many minutes and/or how much space was being taken up by non-productive time and/or storage.
· If 3 minutes were wasted, which is 25% of your observation time, you have problems. You would hate to think that 25% of an 8 hour working day was being lost to non-productive time!
· It is not necessary to either note the areas where the above was taking place or note the names of employees you observe. You can rest assured that if it is happening in one area it is happening in other areas, if one worker appears to be wasting time, they are not alone
· If you found one area of concern over the week you can most probably solve this internally.
· If there are 2 or more areas of concern you should be looking to ask for an outside assessment of the work place.
In all the above areas that you have observed, is there is “waste” that can be eliminated?