As you may know, “Genba”, which has become popular as “Gemba”, is a Japanese word that means “the royal place”.

The word is widely used in Japan, where detectives frequently refer to crime scenes as genba, and Japanese television reporters often refer to themselves as genba/gemba reporters.

In business, gemba refers to the place where work gets done and value is created. For example, in manufacturing, gemba is usually the factory floor, but looking further afield, it can be any location—a construction site, a back office, or a sales bullpen—where the actual work gets done.

When it comes to continuous improvement, problems are most visible in these areas, and the best ideas for improvement will come from visiting gemba. If your goal is to identify waste, there is no substitute for ‘going to work’ and there are things that can only be learned by going there and purposefully observing work.

So a gemba ride, or waste ride, is an activity that brings management and other stakeholders to the front line to look for waste and opportunities for improvement; observe the job where the work is being done and identify what goes wrong or could go wrong, how often it goes wrong or could go wrong, and the associated consequences. The Waste Walk is designed to help everyone understand the value stream and its issues; it is not for reviewing results and making superficial comments.

In addition to identifying debris and the specific gains made during debris walks, there are also higher-level benefits associated with the practice:

• Commitment: Because people at all levels are involved, and because debris walks have proven to be an effective method of uncovering hard-to-identify problems, as well as solutions that improve both productivity and the quality of daily work life, a remarkable increased workforce engagement is a common byproduct. People like it when problems they’ve known about for a long time are finally resolved!
• Trust: Company leaders can establish higher levels of trust with those closest to the work by showing interest and seeking the opinions and input of those who do the work.
• learn the truth: Going to gemba allows leaders to identify reality versus what they think (or hope) is happening. Debris walks also help leaders question their assumptions.
• best ideas: When the people who are doing the work or running the process every day start talking, thinking and feeling empowered, the ideas really flow…
• ask the right questions: Questions are often the “answer” to making breakthrough improvements. However, the quality of those questions is key! Getting the data and seeing it for the first time based on direct observation is powerful; And then, if you can get customers, suppliers, and company personnel working along the chain, the quality of the questions that arise will promote more innovative and precise solutions.
• improvement versus Execution that creates habit: The combination of fresh eyes, diverse perspective, amnesty and a collective and sincere interest in eliminating waste and continuously improving the work process tends to generate real solutions, often innovative; true improvement versus dong things the same way.

Interestingly, scrap hauls have primarily been conducted in manufacturing, warehouse, or workshop settings; and there is certainly much to be gained by “going to gemba” in these areas.

For example, during a walkthrough of manufacturing waste, those involved focused on process constraints and identified various bottlenecks and, ultimately, solutions that increased overall capacity; In another similar setting, the gemba team was able to separate value-added work from non-value-added work, and then created data images to document changes that they believed would maximize the former and eliminate the latter.

Taking a slightly different turn, a manufacturer’s gemba team shortlists a theme each month, such as process safety or inefficiencies, and during the walkthrough they look for activities or process steps that impact the theme.

However, while waste walks are most often implemented within the areas mentioned above, many of those carried out in other organizational areas have proven to be more valuable.

For example, a supply chain management company used scrap routing as a way to solve a recurring order processing issue that had become a hot topic at one of its mid-sized customer locations. He involved several members of his team, including representatives from management, customer service, and his CI group. It worked so well that they now conduct waste walkthroughs of customer sites on a regular basis. Not only are the teams solving problems and making design changes in ways that benefit both parties, their relationships with these customers have also grown significantly, increasing revenue and customer retention.

Building on the success of gemba, or waste walkthroughs, at customer sites, the company recently began conducting them with suppliers and anticipates similar positive results.

Other companies send their employees to observe how their customers use their products and look for complexities, bugs, or problems that the products are causing customers. Once this is done, employees can go back to their own gemba and see more opportunities for improvement.

In the retail sector, a company conducted a series of scrap walks during its inventory season, observing and documenting the process at different stores. While some of the best practices were certainly documented during waste visits at top-performing sites, the greatest gains were achieved during waste visits at traditionally mediocre-performing stores, where, as As a result of the initiative, the average cycle time was reduced. to the half!

While waste walks are used less frequently in areas where the work is less visible, such as back offices, purchasing departments, and R&D labs, some of the best opportunities reside in these locations. When the work is less visible, the gemba or Waste Walk team needs to ask many more questions of the people doing the work to learn what they are doing and gain valuable insight.