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Transitioning to a Lean Leader
Published in Protzman Charles, Whiton Fred, Protzman Dan, Implementing Lean, 2018
Protzman Charles, Whiton Fred, Protzman Dan
Gemba—translated as “on the spot, the actual place, or the real place”—is where value is created. One of the most important aspects of Lean is going to the gemba. The gemba should be a visual workplace, and the factory or office should talk to you by making problems immediately visible. Going to the gemba provides the opportunity for executives, managers, and supervisors to develop their employees by reinforcing organizational priorities and encouraging them to think through the problem-solving process. When conducting a Gemba Walk, executives engage employees in active communication related to topics important to the organization and obtain direct feedback from the staff. The executive or manager may choose topics for each gemba to drill down on potential issues that have been identified and then encourage the area leaders to take the opportunity to ask why five times to find the root cause of the problem. An environment of transparency and trust must be created. Clear, concise, open, and honest dialogue must be continued. Suggestions and feedback must be accepted and evaluated without an initial reaction, reinforcing that there are no stupid or bad ideas.
Organize Visits to Best Practice Organizations for Leaders to “Go See Learn”
Published in Sumeet Kumar, Courageous Leadership, 2017
Seeing is believing. Toyota promoted this concept by asking managers to “Go to Gemba,” which in Japanese means to go to the actual place of work where value is created. Taiichi Ohno, an executive at Toyota, led the development of the concept of the Gemba walk. Gemba walks denote the action of going to see the actual process, understand the work, ask questions, and learn. The Gemba walk is an opportunity for staff to stand back from their day-to-day tasks to walk the floor of their workplace to identify wasteful activities. Gemba walk is designed to allow leaders to identify existing safety hazards, observe machinery and equipment conditions, ask about the practice standards, gain knowledge about the work status, and build relationships with employees. The objective of a Gemba walk is to understand the value stream and its problems rather than review results or make superficial comments. Dara Khosrowshahi, CEO of Uber says, “The thing I’ve found in life is that the higher up you get in an organization the less you know about what's going on.”
Lean Software Development
Published in Steven C. Bell, Michael A. Orzen, Lean IT, 2010
Steven C. Bell, Michael A. Orzen
In the spirit of concurrent development, the entire team (representing all stakeholders, including the customer) should operate in close proximity,‡ in a space designed to encourage team collaboration and workflow. This is the application of Lean work cell design, where teams are aligned with value streams and supported by pull signals and visual indicators. The organization should avoid shared resources across teams whenever practical, for reasons we explored in Chapter 5. In the case of distributed teams where physical co-location is not practical, virtual collaborative workspaces may be used, but occasional face-to-face meetings are helpful to maintain cohesion and overcome communication blocks. In all cases, team members should make regular trips to where the customer work is performed (gemba) to reinforce their understanding of customer requirements.
Exploring the role of lean managers within the Toyota supply network: evidence from a social media platform
Published in Production Planning & Control, 2022
According to Dombrowski and Mielke (2014), the key principles of lean management comprise of building an improvement culture, self-development, qualification, gemba, and hoshin kanri. Within the lean production literature, gemba is often defined as grasping the situation by going to the actual place where the value is added on the production line to work with front line workers to jointly solve problems and eliminate waste (Liker 2004). Whereas hoshin kanri focuses on strategy deployment of the firm’s strategic objectives and ensuring strategic alignment both vertically and horizontally between different teams, departments, and divisions (Liker and Convis 2012). Furthermore, Dombrowski and Mielke (2014) argue that lean management and leadership can be defined as ‘…a methodical system for the sustainable implementation and continuous improvement of the lean production system. It describes the cooperation of employees and leaders in their mutual striving for perfection. This includes the customer focus of all processes as well as the long-term development of employees and leaders’. In particular, lean managers can help by preventing workers from backsliding to the old ways of working, overcoming resistance by middle management, and improving workplace culture and safety (Martínez-Jurado and Moyano-Fuentes 2014).
Green and lean: a Gemba–Kaizen model for sustainability enhancement
Published in Production Planning & Control, 2019
Anass Cherrafi, Said Elfezazi, Brion Hurley, Jose Arturo Garza-Reyes, Vikas Kumar, Anthony Anosike, Luciano Batista
The Gemba walk, linked to Kaizen, can be a powerful tool for associating the Lean and Green paradigms in production processes, through the objective of waste elimination. It allows identifying opportunities for improvement and reducing both Lean and Green wastes.