In the world of manufacturing, Gemba Walk, or shop floor tour, involve walking around the specific part of the workplace where value is created, which is also where the majority of difficulties and bottlenecks occur.
They are a cornerstone of Lean management, enabling leaders to obtain first-hand information on the processes and the challenges faced by their teams. This article explores the definition, steps, benefits and implementation of the process, helping you to achieve operational excellence.
What is a Gemba Walk?
Definition and origin
Gemba literally means “where things happen” in Japanese, and the Gemba Walk is a fundamental lean management practice that has been adopted throughout the manufacturing industry. The approach involves going on to the shop floor, where value is created, to observe operations, detect problems and identify opportunities for improvement. During a field tour, supervisors interact directly with employees, absorb their working environment and gather valuable information to improve their understanding of processes.
The Gemba walk is more than just an inspection of production activities, it’s an opportunity to foster communication and collaboration between different teams. By regularly involving employees in the approach, companies encourage innovation, strengthen team commitment and facilitate continuous process improvement.
Who goes out into the field
Gemba Walks are not the responsibility of one person in the organization, they can be performed by different levels of management, for example:
- For factory managers, it’s about getting an overview of the business, ensuring the strategy is implemented correctly, and boosting their credibility with employees.
- For Operational Excellence or Quality managers, this means assessing the performance of key processes, identifying sources of waste or poor quality, and proposing improvements.
- For production or project managers, Gemba walks can help track project progress, solve problems encountered by their teams and foster collaboration.
Field visits can also include customers, suppliers or partners, to gain a 360° view of the process that is being observed.
What are the goals of a Gemba Walk?
It is part of a continuous improvement process and targets several key objectives. Firstly, it aims to capture the reality of the workplace based on tangible facts rather than subjective opinions. Next, the field tour helps to identify and reduce waste, problems, inefficiencies, deviations from standards and opportunities for improvement in operational processes.
Once these challenges are identified, the Gemba Walk will focus on proposing solutions, actively involving employees in the search for root causes and pertinent corrective measures. In addition, it is crucial to implement these corrective or preventive actions, while monitoring their effectiveness and ensuring they are maintained over time.
Finally, the Gemba Walk aims to strengthen communication, trust and collaboration between management and employees, fostering a work environment that is conducive to innovation and the continued growth of the business.
The checklist for a successful Gemba Walk
For field tours to be effective, it’s essential to prepare both those who will carry out the Gemba Walk and those who will be observed. A Gemba Walk is not an audit, nor is it an evaluation, nor a simple visit, but a constructive and collaborative approach to improving processes and building trust. So it’s vital to be where the value chain is, as monitoring it can help identify areas and steps that have a high potential for waste or breakdown. Involving supervisory teams in the field tour process transforms it into a truly effective operational monitoring tool.
Without clear indicators to measure, the quality of the data collected from the field will be uneven. Supervision will be carried out in a disorderly if not anarchic manner and is rarely fully effective in the long term. By setting up a KPI measurement system, you will be sure to get the most out of it.
You can use the performance measurements from this field visit: to confirm the problem as reported and its pertinence and improvement opportunities identified in situ by your employees, to introduce good information feedback practices, to ensure the continuous improvement of operational control.
You can also enhance the skills of the supervisory team: by providing personalized support for each supervisor in line with his or her specific needs, and by monitoring their progress over time.
Gemba Walk performance indicators
Before you can measure, you need to define the performance indicators that seem most relevant to you.
Here are some useful data points to follow:
- the number of rounds carried out,
- the time interval between 2 field tours,
- average audit time,
- the number of problems reported on the management tool during a tour or during the week,
- the number of recurring problems encountered,
- the number of improvement opportunities identified during the tour,
- problem status (e.g. resolved, unresolved, converted into an action plan).
Using all the data collected will enable you to fine-tune your continuous improvement process thanks to useful findings. And you will make the best decisions for your organization. This is what we call the Gemba Kaizen circle, a meeting organized after each audit with different team leaders from different departments.
Gemba Walk steps
Conduct a field tour
Field tours are easy to conduct if you have prepared them well in advance and defined clear and precise objectives. There are a few rules to follow:
- Carefully observe the different stages of a process without interfering with or disrupting the work of employees. The WWWWHW method (What, When, Where, Who, How, Why) can be used to carry out detailed analysis of the situation.
- Encourage employees to share their views, difficulties, and suggestions.
- Listen and try to understand the operators’ work.
- Ask relevant questions when a problem is identified in order to get to the root cause, using the 5 Whys method for example.
- Work together with field operators to co-construct improvement measures, taking their feasibility into account.
- Thank employees for their participation and cooperation.
- Provide feedback on the observations made and actions planned.
- Compile the information gathered during the observation, compare it with the objectives and standards for the process, then carry out a thorough analysis.
Set up actions
After the field tour, it’s important to analyze the observations made on the ground. This stage consists of examining the notes, comparing the values observed with the performance indicators defined when preparing the Gemba Walk. For example, if the observed reject rate is 5%, but the indicator for standards is 2%, we need to identify the main problems and put forward improvement actions, using problem-solving methods such as QRQC (Quick Response Quality Control), 8D (8 Disciplines) or PDCA, (Plan Do Check Act) and looking for the root causes if these gaps recur.
Analysis of data collected during Gembas
You also need to ask yourself regularly whether the KPIs you’ve chosen raise pertinent questions and align with your initial objectives. Don’t be afraid to change indicators if they prove inappropriate.
If the tour encounters zero waste or problems in production, the team leader should question why no problems have arisen. It’s rare that everything goes perfectly. It’s probably a “hole in the racket”, i.e. a flaw in the Gemba Walk design.
For example, it may not have reviewed all departments and workstations. In this case, it’s important to follow up on the Walk even if no problems were raised.
Our recommendation : you can absolutely invite a colleague from another department to your next Gembas Walks, to bring a fresh perspective and ask questions you might not have thought of.
Gemba Walk benefits
Field tours improve communication between management and front-line workers, fostering a culture of transparency and collaboration. By observing processes directly in the field, management can identify inefficiencies and work with the team to develop practical solutions, leading to continuous improvement. Employees feel valued when management shows interest in their work, which leads to improved commitment and morale.
However, Walks can also have knock-on effects. Challenges include resistance to change, lack of follow-up and inadequate training, which can undermine the success of Gemba Walks. Clear communication, consistent follow-up and ongoing support from top management are central to overcoming these challenges. Involving employees in the process ensures their buy-in and cooperation.
GT Logistics, an example of digitalized daily routines and improved reporting
GT Logistics are experts in logistics outsourcing and assembly operations, offering a range of services: distribution logistics on dedicated platforms, in-plant industrial logistics, delegated manufacturing, contingency logistics and integrated transport solutions.
They used Gemba Walks to optimize production processes, improve quality and reduce waste. However, with traditional paper-based field tours (notebook & pen), a paper overload situation soon emerged. Observers also noted a lack of data traceability, leading to wasted time during routines and audits.
To solve these problems, they called on fabriq to digitalize every stage of the Gemba Walk : preparation, execution, follow-up and analysis. Fabriq provides dedicated software with many benefits, such as improved data collection, analysis, and follow-up of continuous improvement actions.
Features include:
- Creation of forms with tailored objectives
- The ability to add rules to forms for conditional logic
- Planning and organization of field visits
- Data collection and analysis during field visits
- Visualization of Walk execution
- Identification and implementation of corrective actions
- Follow-up and evaluation of field tour results
- Communication and collaboration between participants
- Automatic indicator updates during Walks
In addition to digitalizing Gemba Walks, fabriq includes all the tools you need to manage your shop floor more efficiently (safety, quality, cost…), solve your operational problems and standardize your processes. For more information on fabriq, contact us for a demo!
The importance of involving employees in Gemba Walks
Employees generally appreciate managers visiting the shop floor and taking a close interest in their activities. More importantly, they appreciate that supervisors care about involving staff in shop floor improvements, and not just in terms of productivity.
A successful Gemba Walk requires more than just auditing and monitoring employee activity. Establishing a genuine conversation between managers and staff, the aim is to determine together the most effective solutions to the problems that are raised.
Field staff shouldn’t only have a role of reporting anomalies, but contribute instead to improving processes and facilitating problem resolution. Regularly involving your teams will, in the long run, make them a real driving force for innovation.
In conclusion, Gemba Walk should be all about communication and collaboration. By measuring KPIs that are tailored to your needs, you can maximize the results obtained, from reported data quality to the application of appropriate corrective actions. This is the way to achieve operational excellence.
