Learn about the meaning of Gemba Walk, how to do effective Gemba Walks, and examples of how the process can promote continuous improvement.
A Gemba Walk is a workplace walkthrough which aims to observe employees, ask about their tasks, and identify productivity gains. Gemba Walk is derived from the Japanese word “Gemba” or “Gembutsu” which means “the real place”, so it is often literally defined as the act of seeing where the actual work happens. A gemba walk is a simple yet powerful lean method done by employers to promote continuous improvement.
A safety Gemba Walk, or Gemba safety walk, is simply a safety walk integrated with the Gemba method. Safety Gemba Walks emphasize the continuous improvement of safety by watching the actions required to complete daily tasks and determining ways to make work safer. While a typical site safety walk-through aims to maintain compliance with safety standards, a safety Gemba Walk focuses on looking for opportunities to continuously improve workplace safety.
A virtual Gemba Walk, also called a remote Gemba Walk, is performed remotely using communications media such as video conferencing tools. Virtual Gemba Walks are usually conducted via one-on-one video calls, online focus group discussions, and shadowing exercises, where a worker shares their screen while working and their manager quietly observes, then asks questions when deemed fit.
Gemba Walks help eliminate incorrect assumptions about the workforce and drive changes with a lasting positive impact. Developed at Toyota, Gemba Walks can empower organizations to sustain continuous improvement efforts and help solve disconnects between leadership vision and implementation of processes in operations.
The main goal of Gemba walks is to observe, listen, learn, and help. It is an efficient method that enables leaders to know what is and is not working by being with the workers on the floor, delving into how they approach problem-solving and continuous improvement in everyday work.
Further, Gemba walks are also done with the aim to:
identify issues and gain valuable insights on how to improve them;
reduce existing waste (redundancies, bottlenecks, non-value added steps, safety hazards, etc.) and discover where continuous improvement opportunities exist;
discuss goals and objectives with employees; and
build stable relationships with those who actually do the work and create value.
Apart from being able to proactively engage with employees, the benefits of implementing Gemba Walks include:
Demonstrate management commitment toward professional development
Boost employee morale as you care about them and value their work
Introduce changes that can be easily embraced by workers
Cultivate a culture of improvement, openness, collaboration, and teamwork
Streamline operations across different levels in organizations, saving time and money
To achieve an insightful Gemba walk, walkers can follow these 3 fundamental elements:
Walk around the workplace and observe if processes are done according to standards and if they produce the intended results. Participants of the walkthrough can use a Gemba walk checklist to take note of their observations and use it as a reference document during discussions of the Gemba Kaizen circle.
Gemba walkers need to probe the value stream thoroughly and identify opportunities for improvement through active communication and listening. Techniques, such as the 5 Whys, can be used to identify problematic areas of a process and ensure that they address the root causes of process issues.
Collaborate with the workers in understanding the challenges and determining how they could be addressed. With the steps involved in performing a Gemba walk, it’s important to ensure that every aspect of each process is well accounted for.
While processes are unique for each company, any organization that wishes to conduct a Gemba Walk can be guided by the following steps:
Ideally, the team or employees who will be observed are informed ahead of time about the Gemba Walk that will be performed and the reason why it’s going to be conducted. This will help put the employees at ease and provide the observer with a more authentic insight into what is happening at work daily.
With improvement as the ultimate goal in mind, the observer can prepare questions before the Gemba Walk as well as apply techniques such as the 5 Whys to get relevant information during Gemba Walks. They can also use checklists as guides to ensure that all points are being observed, asked, and recorded.
Never conduct Gemba Walks on the spot. Employees may feel uncomfortable and think that they have done something wrong. Schedule your Gemba Walks and inform the involved workers about them.
The aim is to observe and gather information, not to change anything on the spot or call out deviations during the actual Gemba Walk. This will help establish trust and avoid discomfort among employees being observed, as it will reinforce the idea that the Gemba Walk is indeed for observation to improve processes.
Any improvement that will be made relies on what is recorded during observation. Write down your findings and visualize them by taking photos of what you saw and observed. It will help you recognize patterns that may call for a reworking of action items later.
After the Gemba Walk is done, follow up and share what you learned from the activity, including the issues, struggles, and gaps that need immediate action and resolution. From this, determine which processes should remain and which ones to revamp.
Integrating improvement in practice
Discover how organizations like Toyota Material Handling, Mowi, Thermosash and Byblos Constructions are integrating improvement into how work is done to improve efficiency, reduce wastage and surface actionable insights across their operations.
To ensure an effective Gemba Walk, facilitators should prepare by formulating well-designed questions in a checklist. Consider the following Gemba Walk questions:
What are you responsible for?
How does this task align with company goals?
What is the standard for this task?
How did you learn to complete this task?
Why do you do this specific task like that?
If you had it your way, how would you do this task?
What happens if equipment, tools, or materials are unavailable?
Here’s a real-life example of an effective Gemba Walk and the results it achieved in the organization:
Every day at 9am, the most senior person in a facility, a Vice President, takes the walk along with the National Sales Director, Manufacturing Manager, Production Managers, Shipping Manager, Production Planner, Purchasing Manager, HR Manager, and in-house Lean group.
Each stop on the walk is centered around a “production board”, and if any discussion at a board lasts longer than 3 minutes, they will assign someone responsible to coordinate a meeting or initiate a review of the issue.
Operators at each location participate, enabling all parts of the organization to be in the loop—where everyone can provide input when issues arise.
As a result, direct lines of communication have immensely increased as the staff received first-hand communication on a daily basis from the senior management about what was going on in the organization.
Moreover, the staff knew that senior management was interested in them and their work. They witnessed their leaders identify problems and take steps to resolve them. (source)
Carefully-planned, well-executed, and followed-through Gemba Walks can continuously optimize business processes and improve the quality of work. With the help of a Gemba Walk Software such as Mitti (by SafetyCulture), you can efficiently drive continuous improvement everywhere, every day.
Gemba Walk Checklists
Using checklists during a Gemba walk is not an option but a must. Gemba Walk checklists are used during walkthroughs to document observations of business processes in the actual work environment.
