As we go on our Gemba Walks and do our Reflections, we also must step back to try to understand what it is we are doing while on the Gemba Walk. The Gemba Walk itself is a tool to learn. As long as we focus on the learning aspect, we have found that we build a deep understanding of the process. There is more however that occurs, and it seems as though the pattern of learning follows a typical model. I would like to share a model we have observed that occurs each time we spread the Gemba Walk to a new unit.
First we can look at the three major elements to the bottom of the model. These are the three things that happen for people as they start Gemba Walks. Learning is the major part of the Gemba Walk, and so that is the first thing people experience. They learn a lot more than the typical "manage by walking around" and other methods of being in the work unit. By forcing ourselves to stop in a place and watch the flow of product and people, we can get a much better understanding of what is actually happening within our systems. Second, we build up trust with our employees. Gemba Walks inherently have us interact with our employees in a new way than we or they may be used to. The fact that "Show Respect" is a key element of the Gemba Walk, we start to see people open up to us about the things they go through each day. This trust is quite useful to have when the organization grows enough that they want to set up the andon process. Finally we see people Improve Together. While on Gemba Walks the interactions we have with employees can start to turn into identifying opportunities to make things better. This creates the "kaizen mindset" among all employees, which again is quite useful to the continuous improvement efforts of a Lean organization.
To the top of the model we see the basic four step process to the model. The major three elements below overlap all four of the process steps, but generally we find the Learn element to correspond with steps 1 & 2, Build Trust correspond to steps 1, 2, 3, & 4, and Improve Together correspond with step 4. Step 1 is to Learn the Process. This is a critical step to any Gemba Walk as we have found many disagreements in meetings about what is really happening at the place of work. Deeply learning the process includes standing back and watching the flow of product through the system. We can map the process and walk the process. We also will want to get a better understanding from our employees why we are seeing what we are seeing. This again requires respectfully asking questions. Some people can spend a lot more time than others at this particular step if they are not intimately familiar with the process or if there is a lot of variation within the process.
Step 2 is to Learn the Struggles. As much as we need to see the flow of value, we also need to see the struggles our employees go through to perform the process. What we have found is that by looking and discussing things in terms of struggles with employees, we not only build trust, we also start to see why we might have so much variation. We can find things such as ergonomic issues like bending, reaching, turning, etc. or we can find things such as a lack of confidence in what to do next (a symptom of not having standard work or a robust training system). The struggles help us look more deeply in how our people interact at each step in the process. We even start seeing a lot of the waste here, but it's more apparent at this point in the learning process as a struggle to complete the necessary task. We have found that this step is a huge step for building trust, and gives us some insight into some of the issues our employees tell us during our Huddles.
Step 3 is to Learn to See the Waste. Since we now see the flow of value and the struggles our employees go through in the process, we now can get a much deeper understanding of the waste. We have found this to be a quick progression for some, but for others it can still be hidden by the focus on the product flow. There is one case in which this happened, where there were people placed at multiple places along the flow to supplement the induction of product into the process. Basically, every time the flow stopped, they would manually add product to the conveyance. If you were only looking at the product flowing in the process, you might miss this step every time. By looking at the struggles, we see employees manually cutting straps, removing sleeves, bending, and twisting just to ensure the flow continues. Because we can now see the person, we can start asking why they do we even have them there to start? This allows us to see the stop and go processing that is occurring. This leads to seeing defects, overprocessing to take care of the defect, excess motion and transport loading and getting product to load into the machines, inventory build ups due to stoppages, and so on and so on. All this time our people must work quite hard to get the work done, and all the while we waste their minds and creativity. We must all be able to see the waste, and we must see it for the last part.
Step 4 is to See how to Change for the Better. For some people, this progression can take just a few times through a Gemba Walk. We have found those that can make this learning progression fast have a deep understanding of the process from the start. Typically this would be someone from maintenance who works on every part of the process, or from operations who sees the process every day. This part gets us to the point where we can start seeing every single step that is not directly value-add as an opportunity to improve. Since we have seen the struggles of our people we can also see the opportunities to make the work easier and improve quality. If a person has not been successful in learning in the previous 3 steps, we find this step to be very difficult. The opportunities for improvement from those without the strong learning and understanding typically revolve around adding more staffing or blaming (either people or machines). It takes a great respect for people and process to get to this point, but it is ultimately one of the best ways to transform the culture of the organization toward improvement.
While this model may not work for everyone, it has been something I've been observing as the way people learn as they start on their Gemba Walks. I hope this general Gemba Learning Model can help others understand how Gemba Walks benefit the learning process.