Gemba Walk

Written By

Guntapudi Udayravichandra

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Gemba walk can be defined as “A Regular or Scheduled walkthrough through the factory, which focuses on Elimination of Non value added activities (NVAs) in producing a product”

Lean methodologies are growing very aggressively in all facilities and brands. Almost all products and services require Lean execution. To make things simple and effective.

Today we are going to look into one of the key tool in lean i.e, “Gemba Walk”.

Gemba walk is key for every factories, where we can get more ideas from all key stakeholders or management or customers for enhancement of Efficiency. New tools, Poke yoke’s, Jigs, Safety, and other improvements which can be done for the improvement of the product.

Getting ideas and implementing ideas are other side of the coin.

You will also get Gemba walk forms in downloadable excel formats.

Let’s get started…

First an Factory management should know the below. We will be discussing following points in this article.

• What is Gemba and Gemba Walk?
• Where to conduct Gemba walk?
• What are the requirements of Gemba Walk?
• Participants
• What to focus?
• Expected outcomes of the Gemba walk.
• How to follow up until Idea/Kaizen is implemented.
• Follow up audit.
• Gemba Walk Actual Outcomes share to Stake holders and Management.
• Repeat the same.

What is Gemba and Gemba Walk?

Gemba is a Japanese word which is known as “The Real Place”.  Which can also tell that where the actual work is going to complete product or service.

Gemba Walk is mostly designed to take Management or Customers or Stake holders to real place. To find problems in production and to get solutions for each problems.

So Gemba walk helps to go through bottom lines of the each Line or Production to find route causes and solutions (Kaizens) for each and every point.

Which majorly works on low cost and high income.

It should be frequent and Scheduled Walkthrough.

Taichi Ohno, an executive in Toyota started this Gemba walk, to find the NVA, wasteful activities that can be eliminated from the production flow.

Gemba walk definition: The Gemba walk can be defined as “A Regular or Scheduled walkthrough through the factory, which focuses on Elimination of Non value added activities (NVAs) in producing a product”

Need to have clear Schedule for Gemba walkthrough for year to let everyone know. Need to Circulate to everyone. Gemba Walk excel is attached to this Article.

Download Gemba Walk Schedule in excel :-

Picture 2: Sample Schedule for Gemba Walkthrough

Key Note: To conduct Gemba Walk by Factory management, it requires experience in previous walkthroughs as a participant. To learn more about Gemba for getting lean thinking or lean mindset. Many Japanese or Chinese factories hire outsourcing teachers or Sensei’s for 1year to 2years.

This 2years every month 1week team should be with Sensei in Floor. Need to observe how they are finding bottlenecks in production and what are the ideas they are providing for improvements. So these type of exposure can conduct walkthroughs in a proper way.

Where to conduct Gemba walk?

Gemba walk can be conducted in any place. Since it is involved in with all Management, Customers, and related stakeholders for this walkthrough.

We need to consider some Considerations while initiating Gemba walkthroughs. Please find the below top points to conduct Gemba walkthroughs:

New Product Launch: Every facility tends to have a new product to be produced every 3months of time. Every product cannot be standardized at the time of Development.

There should be many improvements that can make the product more efficient. When a product is newly launched in production. After Changeover minimum before 3 days of time, need to have Gemba Walkthrough.