Basics of Gemba Walk for Leaders starting their Lean journey. Its how to make Lean 'stick' in DNA of your Organisation.

1. Zeeshan Syed – Lean Sigma Practitioner

2. Topics
• What is The Gemba Walk
• Why Gemba?
• The Gemba Walk
• Who’s Doing It?
• Implementing the Gemba Walk
• Focal Points
• The Bottom Line

4. What To Do?
Reduce Lead Time!
▫ Get each process to produce only what the next process
needs when it needs it.
▫ Orchestrate (control, manage, regulate) operations to get
ever closer to this ideal, ever shortening the lead time.
ORDER CASH
“All we’re trying to do is shorten the time line…”
Taiichi Ohno

5. TOYOTA PRODUCTION SYSTEM
Eliminate Waste cost and profit
What is Value?
What is Waste ?
Anything that adds cost without adding value
Defined by the customer

11. What is the Gemba Walk?
• In business, Gemba refers to the place where value
is created and the general notion is that the best
improvement ideas will come simply from going to
the Gemba (’bottom-up’ vs. ‘top-down’)
• The ‘Gemba Walk’ is an activity that takes
management to the front lines to look for waste and
opportunities a.k.a. to practice Gemba Kaizen.
• Gemba is different with the “western” concept of
MBWA (Management by Walking Around)

18. Gemba Walk & Leadership
• Gemba walk is a way to build up the learning model
like sensei’s apprenticeship
▫ Senei is also a Japanese work means “teacher or
coach”
▫ The subordinates are just like students or apprentices
• A leader should also instill in the subordinates the
discipline needed to effectively sustain a lean
conversion and have it improve consistently
• A leader has the responsibility of showing the “True
North” direction of his students, coach them, point
them in right direction and tell them when to stop
and when to go

20. What is the Gemba Walk?
A leader teaches by stretching ones thinking and
perceptions through questions that stimulate one to
consider entirely new possibilities.
▫ What would you learn if you measured in smaller
intervals of time?
▫ What is the team leader supposed to be doing in this
situation?
▫ How could these expectations be made more clear?

21. G E M B A .
• The gemba walk is a “Check” of Plan-Do-Check-Act.
• You are checking the health & the pulse of your
leadership systems by looking at how they engage their
people and processes.
• Walking the gemba is a process of developing your
people.

23. • A model that allows an organization to recognize the
“key group” in a lean transition., “the sergeants
and lieutenants in the war against waste”.
• A model that helps identify existing communication
gaps between operators and leadership and
leadership and operators. This group is vital to
successful policy deployment, and the development
of a cultural of continuous improvement.
Gemba walk is a way of learning. A model that
will help you gradually establish a new, lean way
of seeing and thinking.
Gemba Walk model

24. Who’s Doing It?
Bob Nardelli – CEO Home Depot
“There was a perception that I was going out to catch
people,” he says. “Over time they understand that I just
want to see it like a customer. I can do my job better if I
have firsthand exposure to the good, the bad and the
ugly.”
Michael Dell – Chairman Dell Computer
“Michael Dell was known for popping in, unannounced and
without an entourage, at the factories in Austin. He would
just walk around, look, and listen to people.”

33. Walking the Gemba is part of “Check” in Plan-Do-Check-Act.
It is the process of carefully observing to see where things are
not as they should be.
Sometimes there is less walking involved, and more just
standing and watching.
This, of course, begs the question: Watching for what?
This, ultimately, is what makes it different than even just
walking around looking.

39. Implementing the Gemba Walk
• Take a walk through the core activities of
the whole, extended enterprise:
▫ Product and process development.
▫ Supplier management.
▫ Customer management and support.
▫ Fulfillment from order to delivery.
▫ General management system for the
extended enterprise. (“What do managers
do?” “How do managers lead?”)

41. The Bottom Line
The currency of leadership is presence.
Where leaders spend their time determines what is
important to their organization