Gemba Walks

287 Pages·2011·1.03 MB·English

by  James Womack

Also by Jim Womack

The Future of the Automobile, with Alan Altshuler, Martin
Anderson, Daniel T. Jones, and Daniel Roos
The Machine that Changed the World, with Daniel T. Jones
and Daniel Roos
Lean Thinking, with Daniel T. Jones
Seeing the Whole, with Daniel T. Jones
Lean Solutions, with Daniel T. Jones
GEMBA WALKS

by Jim Womack

Foreword by John Shook

Lean Enterprise Institute, Inc.
Cambridge, MA USA
lean.org

Version 1.0
February 2011
© Copyright 2011 Lean Enterprise Institute, Inc. All rights reserved. Lean
Enterprise Institute and the leaper image are registered trademarks of Lean
Enterprise Institute, Inc.

ISBN: 978-1-934109-30-4
Design by Off-Piste Design
February 2011
Library of Congress Control Number: 2010939596

Lean Enterprise Institute, Inc.
One Cambridge Center
Cambridge, MA 02142
617-871-2900 • fax: [phone] • lean.org
For Dan, with profound gratitude for more than
30 years of gemba walking together.
FOREWORD

Lean conversation is peppered with Japanese terms. Consider the term
“kaizen,” which is now understood as the structured, relentless approach to
continually improving every endeavor—even beyond lean circles. The use of the
term “gemba” may be a little less widespread, but it’s no less central to lean
thinking.

Gemba (also spelled “genba” with an n) means “actual place” in Japanese.
Lean thinkers use the term to mean real place or real thing, or place of value
creation. Toyota and other Japanese companies often supplement gemba with its
related term “genchi gembutsu” to emphasize the literal meaning—“genchi” like
gemba means real place, and “gembutsu” means real thing. These terms
emphasize reality, or empiricism. As the detectives in the old TV show Dragnet
used to say, “Just the facts, ma’am.”

And so the gemba is where you go to understand work and to lead. It’s also
where you go to learn. For the past 10 years Jim Womack has used his gemba
walks as opportunities for both. In these pages, he shares with us anew what he
has learned.

The first time I walked a gemba with Jim was on the plant floor of a Toyota
supplier. Jim was already famous as the lead author of The Machine That
Changed the World; I was the senior American manager at the Toyota Supplier
Support Center. My Toyota colleagues and I were a bit nervous about showing
our early efforts of implementing the Toyota Production System (TPS) at North
American companies to “Dr. James P. Womack.” We had no idea of what to
expect from this famous academic researcher.

My boss was one of Toyota’s top TPS experts, Mr. Hajime Ohba. We rented a
small airplane for the week so we could make the most of our time, walking the
gemba of as many worksites as possible. As we entered the first supplier,
walking through the shipping area, Mr. Ohba and I were taken aback as Dr.
Womack immediately observed a work action that spurred a probing question.
The supplier was producing components for several Toyota factories. They were
preparing to ship the exact same component to two different destinations. Dr.
Womack immediately noticed something curious. Furrowing his brow while
confirming that the component in question was indeed exactly the same in each
container, Dr. Womack asked why parts headed to Ontario were packed in small
returnable containers, yet the same components to be shipped to California were
in a large corrugated box. This was not the type of observation we expected of
an academic visitor in 1993.

Container size and configuration was the kind of simple (and seemingly trivial)
matter that usually eluded scrutiny, but that could in reality cause unintended and
highly unwanted consequences. It was exactly the kind of detail that we were
encouraging our suppliers to focus on. In fact, at this supplier in particular, the
different container configurations had recently been highlighted as a problem.
And, in this case, the supplier was not the cause of the problem. It was the
customer—Toyota! Different requirements from different worksites caused the
supplier to pack off the production line in varying quantities (causing
unnecessary variations in production runs), to prepare and hold varying
packaging materials (costing money and floor space), and ultimately resulted in
fluctuations in shipping and, therefore, production requirements. The trivial
matter wasn’t as trivial as it seemed.

We had not been on the floor two minutes when Dr. Womack raised this
question. Most visitors would have been focused on the product, the technology,
the scale of the operation, etc. Ohba-san looked at me and smiled, as if to say,
“This might be fun.”

That was years before Jim started writing his eletters, before even the birth of
the Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI). The lean landscape has changed drastically
over the past 10 years, change reflected in Jim’s essays. From an emphasis on
the various lean tools for simple waste elimination in manufacturing firms,
attention has steadily shifted to a focus on the underlying management
principles, systems, and practices that generate sustainable success in any type of
organization. Also, the impact of lean continues to grow, moving from industry
to industry, country to country, led by a growing number of practitioners and
academics and other lean thinkers. Entirely new questions are being asked today
of lean, as a result of the practice of the Lean Community, most of whom have
been transformed by Jim’s work.

Receiving praise for all he has accomplished in inspiring the lean movement
that has turned immeasurable amounts of waste into value, Jim always responds
with the same protest: “I’ve never invented anything. I just take walks, comment
on what I see, and give courage to people to try.”

“I just take walks, comment on what I see, and give courage to people to try.”
Hmm, sounds familiar. Toyota’s Chairman Fujio Cho says lean leaders do three
things: “Go see, ask why, show respect.”

Yes, Jim takes many walks, as he describes in these pages. And in doing so he
offers observations on phenomena that the rest of us simply can’t or don’t see.
He has a remarkable ability to frame issues in new ways, asking why things are
as they are, causing us to think differently than we ever did before. Saul Bellow
called this kind of observation “intense noticing.” Ethnographers teach it as a
professional tool. Lean practitioners learn it as a core proficiency.

But simply seeing—and communicating—lean practice is but one way that Jim
has inspired others. Jim gives encouragement in the real sense of the term:
courage to try new things. Or to try old things in different ways. I don’t know if
there’s a stronger embodiment of showing respect than offering others the
courage to try.

Without Jim’s encouragement, I certainly would not be here at the Lean
Enterprise Institute. I probably would not have had the courage to leave Toyota
many years ago to discover new ways of exploring the many things I had learned
or been exposed to at Toyota.

But I am just one of countless individuals Jim has inspired over the past two
decades. And with this collection of 10 years of gemba-walk observations, be
prepared to be inspired anew.

John Shook
Chairman and CEO
Lean Enterprise Institute
Cambridge, MA, USA
February 2011
TABLE OF CONTENTS

INTRODUCTION

PURPOSE

Purpose, Process, People

Lean Consumption

Repurpose before You Restructure

PROCESS

Taking a Value-Stream Walk at Firm A

Creating Basic Stability

The Power of a Precise Process

Lean Information Management

The Wonder of Level Pull

PEOPLE

Bad People or a Bad Process?

Making Everyone Whole

Fewer Heroes, More Farmers

The Problem with Creative Work and Creative Management

Respect for People

MANAGEMENT

From Lean Tools to Lean Management

What I’ve Learned about Planning and Execution

It Takes 2 (or More) to A3

The Problem of Sustainability
From Staffs Conducting Programs to Line Managers Solving
Problems

The Mind of the Lean Manager

Homicide by Example?

The Work of Management

Modern Management vs. Lean Management

TRANSFORMATION

Shopping for a Sensei

The ‘Right’ Sequence for Implementing Lean

Substituting Money for Value-Stream Management

We Have Been (Lean) Thinking

Dueling Sensei and the Need for a Standard Operating System

Mura, Muri, Muda?

Kaizen or Rework?

The Worst Form of Muda

Constancy of Purpose

Becoming Horizontal in a Vertical World

DIFFUSION

Lean Beyond the Factory

Manage the Contract or Improve the Value Stream?

Thinking End to End

The Missing Link

Lean Thinking for Air Travel

Creating Lean Healthcare

The Tipping Point?

The Joy of a Greenfield