Maintaining quality, continuous improvement, and consistency in any industry can be challenging especially when you are managing dispersed or large teams, complex projects, segmented workflows, or multiple departments. And that is where exercises such as Gemba Walks can make a significant impact.
However, when you are starting your Gemba Walk, it is easy to rush in at a very high speed, which can lead to overlooking opportunities and missing crucial steps.
In this piece, we will discuss what a Gemba Walk Checklist should include. Read on!
What is a Gemba Walk?
For starters, we will first define a Gemba Walk. Gemba literally means “the real place or actual place”. In a company, this exact place means the place where value is added, such as the shop floor, factory floor, production floor, and office floor.
While work happens across a company at a variety of levels, Gemba Walks often helps surface the job happening at the production level. This is sometimes described as visiting the place where real work takes place.
Benefits of Gemba Walk
Performance and processes are boosted by Gemba Walks. This lean management tool allows you to engage with staff in order to explore improvement opportunities and observe processes in the workplace.
Gemba Walks help in the following areas:
• Trust building: The presence of a manager at the workplace proves that the company takes workplace issues and their resolutions seriously.
• Workplace efficiency: This lean manufacturing tool helps boost workplace processes, improve workplace productivity and reduce waste.
• Communication: When a manager asks questions about issues and gets answers from employees, it helps them clarify misunderstandings as well as align their perspectives with employees’ experiences.
• Problem-solving: Gemba Walks provide context to an issue and help leaders understand it better and present actionable solutions.
3 crucial elements of Gemba Walks
A successful Gemba Walk has a series of elements, which help you point out and solve issues in the workplace. They include:
1 – Go and see
Walk around where standard work is done and observe how the work is done. Don’t just depend on what workers tell you or what you see on paper. Seeing for yourself is the most effective way to know the process and identify areas for process improvement.
2 – Ask questions
The quality control manager or the project manager doing the Gemba Walk needs to ask workers questions. Asking ‘why’ will allow you to understand why things are done in a specific way and understand the process. This will also allow you to gain ideas on how to improve the process.
Additionally, it shows your interest in knowing the situation and identifying ways to better it. That can encourage workers to be more cooperative and open during the walk.
3 – Respect people
Treat your workers with respect and be available for them. Let them know you value their input and appreciate their effort and work. That will help make the walk more productive and establish a positive rapport, which results in optimal performance.
What is a Gemba Walk checklist?
A Gemba Walk checklist is an issue-solving tool used by team leaders and managers to help assess a process. You can create a custom Gemba Walk template or use a standard work checklist template. There are many free checklists available.
Here are the steps to an effective Gemba Walk:
• Choose a theme. A theme will help you be effective and focus your efforts.
By preparing your team members, your employees will feel more comfortable and collaborative.
• Focus on the process: Keep in mind that Gemba Walks focus on the problem and not on employee performance.
• Follow the value stream: This will give you an opportunity to know areas with a potential for waste activities.
• Record your observations: Write down or record everything that grabs your attention.
• Ask the right questions: Think like reporters who are looking for answers.
• Follow-up: Offer your workers a follow-up report about what you’ve learned from your walk and the improvements that can be made.
Gemba Walk Checklist
The Gemba Walk is about stepping into the workplace. Choose a theme and make the walk work for you. It is about learning and much more than an audit. So use it as a way to teach workers the basics of continuous improvement. For instance, you can ask them why it’s necessary to measure the environmental impacts of human activity.
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Luke Parker is a visionary leader and the driving force behind Alfa seek, a premier platform dedicated to the future of electronic trading. With a deep-rooted passion for finance and technology, Luke has been instrumental in transforming Alfa seek from a modest startup into a leading beacon for traders worldwide.
