is a Japanese term meaning "the actual place". Japanese

detective A detective is an investigator, usually a member of a law enforcement agency. They often collect information to solve crimes by talking to witnesses and informants, collecting physical evidence, or searching records in databases. This leads th ...

s call the

crime scene A crime scene is any location that may be associated with a committed crime. Crime scenes contain physical evidence that is pertinent to a criminal investigation. This evidence is collected by crime scene investigators (CSI) and law enforcemen ...

''genba,'' and Japanese TV reporters may refer to themselves as reporting from ''genba.'' In business, ''genba'' refers to the place where value is created; in manufacturing the ''genba'' is the factory floor. It can be any "site" such as a construction site, sales floor or where the service provider interacts directly with the customer. In

lean manufacturing Lean manufacturing is a production method aimed primarily at reducing times within the production system as well as response times from suppliers and to customers. It is closely related to another concept called just-in-time manufacturing (J ...

, the idea of ''genba'' is that the problems are visible, and the best improvement ideas will come from going to the ''genba.'' The ''gemba'' walk, much like management by walking around (MBWA), is an activity that takes management to the front lines to look for waste and opportunities to practice ''genba

kaizen is concept referring to business activities that continuously improve all functions and involve all employees from the CEO to the assembly line workers. ''Kaizen'' also applies to processes, such as purchasing and logistics, that cross orga ...

,'' or practical shop floor improvement. An important difference with MBWA is that Gemba Walks are not done randomly, but with a clear goal and often frequency and structure. Glenn Mazur introduced this term into Quality Function Deployment (QFD, a quality system for new products where manufacturing has not begun) to mean the customer's place of business or lifestyle. The idea is that to be customer-driven, one must go to the customer's ''genba'' to understand his problems and opportunities, using all one's senses to gather and process data.

Gemba walk

Gemba (aka Walkie Lookie) walks denote the action of going to see the actual process, understand the work, ask questions, and learn. It is also known as one fundamental part of

Lean management Lean project management is the application of lean concepts such as lean construction, lean manufacturing and lean thinking to project management. Lean project management has many ideas in common with other lean concepts; however, the main pr ...

philosophy. Taiichi Ohno, an executive at Toyota, led the development of the concept of the Gemba Walk. The Gemba Walk is an opportunity for staff to stand back from their day-to-day tasks to walk the floor of their workplace to identify wasteful activities. The objective of Gemba Walk is to understand the value stream and its problems rather than review results or make superficial comments. Along with Genchi Genbutsu or "Go, Look, See", Gemba Walk is one of the 5 Lean guiding principles that should be practiced by Lean leaders on a daily basis. The ''gemba'' walk, is an activity that takes management to the front lines to look for waste and opportunities to practice ''gemba

,'' or practical shopfloor improvement.

Application

The practice of regularly going to the Lean workplace to see the actual practices is known as gemba walking. Executives should expect to spend 45 to 60 minutes every week or two gemba walking with a Lean teacher, or

Sensei Sensei, Seonsaeng, Tiên sinh or Xiansheng, corresponding to Chinese characters , is an East Asian honorific term shared in Japanese, Korean, Vietnamese and Chinese; it is literally translated as "person born before another" or "one who c ...

, for six months to a year. Thereafter, they should regularly gemba walk on their own. Gemba walks are crucial to maintaining the disciplined adherence to Lean process designs, part of the Lean support role permeating all leadership positions.

Similarities

The term "going to the gemba" or, more appropriately, the Japanese term "genchi genbutsu" is also perceived to be comparable to management by walking around. The method bears much resemblance to the time and motion studies of

Frederick Winslow Taylor Frederick Winslow Taylor (March 20, 1856 – March 21, 1915) was an American mechanical engineer. He was widely known for his methods to improve industrial efficiency. He was one of the first management consultants. In 1909, Taylor summed up ...

, or even the more recent

contextual inquiry Contextual inquiry (CI) is a user-centered design (UCD) research method, part of the contextual design methodology. A contextual inquiry interview is usually structured as an approximately two-hour, one-on-one interaction in which the researcher w ...

and

Contextual design Contextual design (CD) is a user-centered design process developed by Hugh Beyer and Karen Holtzblatt. It incorporates ethnographic methods for gathering data relevant to the product via field studies, rationalizing workflows, and designing human ...

methods, which are based in context-specific learning of work practices, in order to produce design-relevant process and product insights.

Differences

Whereas Taiichi Ohno encouraged a focus on "going to the gemba," W. Edwards Deming suggested the need to look at the system, often referenced as "Production Viewed as a System". Deming's model of a system extends from suppliers, through an entire organization, to its customers, looping around with customer feedback. As conceived by Deming, and first shared in Japan during his infamous 1950 visit, his feedback loop is fundamental to exploring opportunities for continual improvement throughout the system. The commonly used models of production associated with lean, such as " value-stream mapping," do not extend to include suppliers, customers, or include a feedback loop to foster continual improvement of the system.

Knowledge economy work application

Because of the lack of physical products or machines processing them, knowledge-based work, e.g., scientific research, software development, or copywriting, is not typically associated with the Gemba practice. But given Taiichi Ohno's influence on Lean project management and the later transformation of manufacturing Kanban into Kanban for IT, it's not uncommon to meet software teams referring to their visual Scrum and Kanban boards as their Gemba. With the code managed in repositories, the state of each task and planned developments are only available for viewing on those workflow management boards.

References