This week I worked with another team to start their journey toward Operational Excellence. Again there were many great discussions, challenges, and lots of fun! The goal for the end of the first week is to begin our Gemba Walk to find waste. We look for overburdened people, unevenness, and all forms of process waste. In our company we have used the TIMWOOD acronym in the past, but with this training we seek to use our eyes and minds to truly understand what each waste really looks like in our operations. At the last reflection of the week, when the team was asked about what they learned, it was amazing to hear one of them say "I never saw the waste there before...we've just always done it that way."
What I've found now after teaching people how to find waste is that it is just a different perspective on the everyday normal things we see. Take for instance this photo. I was walking through a garden in California a couple years ago and noticed these tall white flowers. Walking under the flowers along the ground were some insects. As I stood there watching the insects I wondered what the flower looked like from their perspective. I crouched down and looked up and saw what you see here in this photo. The beauty of the ordinary flower seen in a new way. It was awe-inspiring in that moment to see this, as I had never before seen the flowers from this angle.
Going on a Gemba Walk and seeing waste in a process for the first time is much like this experience. We took supervisors and managers on a walk through their operations and stopped in multiple areas and took the time to see the operation from a whole new perspective - by looking for waste. We had used this wonderful visual that Paul Akers (https://paulakers.net/wp-content/uploads/2014/07/eight-wastes-burger.pdf ) to provide a basic look at what waste looks like and how waste can create even more waste! Using the visual we got people talking about what we might see on the workroom floor. Then we established some ground rules of going on our Gemba Walk.
1. Go and See: Spend some time in one area and try to see the waste
2. Ask Questions: When you aren't sure what is happening in an operation, ask the employee!
3. Show Respect: When you do ask a question, or just whenever you are in someone's operation, give them respect!
This led us to go on the first Gemba Walk for a lot of people. In the past they had gone out to the workroom floor to find safety compliance issues, and some had even had the previous Lean Safety Gemba Walk training and could see where the process may cause safety issues. For those that were able to see the process from the safety perspective, seeing the waste was just another way of looking at the world around them. For those that had not gone on any such Gemba Walk before, this was like putting on glasses for the first time when before everything was just so blurry!
I took two supervisors and a manager on a Gemba Walk around the end of the operation near the shipping dock. As we walked toward the docks, we stopped at the last main operation in the flow. When in the operation we stopped in one area where we assign products to particular airlines (basically put a cardboard sleeve over a tray, and then stamp an airline label/barcode to it). As we watched, the machine that puts a sleeve on the tray kept jamming. We saw the employee remove the jammed tray, inspect what the issue was, and walked it back over to the main conveyor. I asked the supervisors I took on the Gemba Walk a simple question: "What do you see?" They started describing easily a dozen things. I asked them to translate what it was they saw back to one of the wastes we had just learned about. On those they had trouble with, I helped with the translation. They fed off each other's energy, seeing the operation in a completely new way than before. As we were about to move on with the walk, the manager brought us together to talk about what waste a particular defect we saw would have on all operations outside of our plant. He saw how the quality of the product would continue to diminish on its journey if the tray was under-filled. If it were under-filled, the product would come out of order inside the tray and the next person or machine that handled it would experience a new defect, causing them to overprocess it, and by doing so perform some motion and transport waste. Not only were they seeing the waste in front of them, they were seeing it continue on outside of their flow!
Waste is Everywhere!
We continued to two more spots on their first Gemba Walk and continued to see all the waste around us. "It is everywhere!" one of the supervisors had exclaimed as we all smiled at him. I assured them that they would not be able to go another day in their lives without seeing all the waste around them. It can become overwhelming to, for the first time, see the world in a whole new perspective. We stood together and discussed what to do next. My only challenge to them was to try to improve one thing per day to start. Whether it is to organize something, fix an issue in the process causing defects, or any improvement, start with one as not to be so overwhelmed by their new found skill. Respect others and teach them this skill as well. Show the people doing the work what waste looks like, and together find out how to improve.
After taking more supervisors and managers on their own walks, we reflected as a team. We went through our basic reflection, asking what went well, what can we improve, and what we learned. When discussing what we learned, the Plant Manager spoke up and said "I never saw the waste there before. I've watched that operation for years. It's as though I couldn't ever see the waste because we've just always done it that way." This learning was something we all learned, take the time, gain new perspective, and learn to see what we do in a whole new way - there is waste everywhere!