What is a “Gemba” – a slight rant

Gemba, as a term, is here to stay. We’re told that gemba comes from the Japanese for “the actual place”, and people who know more than me say it probably should translate as “Genba” but phonetically it uses an “m” instead and as a result, it’s commonly referred to as gemba – so that’s how it is used. Someday I’ll see a good linguistic study of loan words in quality circles, and I have been known to fight against some of the “buzz-terminess” of adopting words from Japanese. But gemba is a term that seems to have settled in, and heck, English is a borrowing language.

Just don’t subject me to any more hour-long talks about how we’re all doing lean wrong because we misunderstood a Japanese written character (I can assure you I don’t know any Japanese written characters). The Lean practitioner community sometimes reminds me of 80s Ninja movies, and can be problematic in all the same ways – you start with “Enter the Ninja” and before long it’s Remo Williams baby!

So let’s pretend that gemba is an English word now, we’ve borrowed it and it means “where the work happens.” It also seems to be a noun and a verb.

And if you know any good studies on the heady blend of Japanophobia mixed with Japanophilia from the 80s and 90s that saturated quality and management thinking, send them my way.

I think we can draw from ethnography more in our methodology.

The Importance of the Gemba Walk

Gemba is a principle from the lean methodology that says “go and see” something happening for real – you need to go and see how the process really works. This principle rightly belongs as one of the center points of quality thinking. This may be fighting words but I think it is the strongest of the principles from Lean because of the straightforward “no duh” of the concept. Any quality idea that feels so straightforward and radical at the same time is powerful.

You can think of a gemba through the PDCA lifecycle -You plan, you do it, you decide on the learnings, you follow through.

This is all about building a shared understanding of problems we all face together by:

1. Observation of specific issues where things don’t go as intended, listening to the people who do the work.
2. Discussion of what those issues mean both in the details of operations but also on a wider strategic level.
3. Commitment to problem solving in order to investigate further – not to fix the issue but to have the time to delve deeper. The assumption is that if people understand better what they do, they perform better at every aspects of their job

Gemba walks demonstrate visible commitment from the leadership to all members of the organization. They allow leadership to spread clear messages using open and honest dialogue and get a real indication of the progress of behavioral change at all levels. They empower employees because their contributions to site results are recognized and their ideas for continuous improvements heard.

Elements of a Successful Gemba

Gemba Walks as Standard Work

You can standardize a lot of the preparation of a gemba walk by creating standard work. I’ve seen this successfully done for data integrity, safety, material management, and other topics.

Build a frequency, and make sure they are often, and then hold leaders accountable.

Going to the Gemba for a Deviation and Root Cause Analysis

These same principles can apply to golden-hour deviation triage and root cause analysis. This form of gemba means bringing together a cross-functional team meeting that is assembled where a potential deviation event occurred. Going to the gemba and “freezing the scene” as close as possible to the time the event occurred will yield valuable clues about the environment that existed at the time – and fresher memories will provide higher quality interviews. This gemba has specific objectives:

• Obtain a common understanding of the event: what happened, when and where it happened, who observed it, who was involved – all the facts surrounding the event. Is it a deviation?
• Clearly describe actions taken, or that need to be taken, to contain impact from the event: product quarantine, physical or mechanical interventions, management or regulatory notifications, etc.
• Interview involved operators: ask open-ended questions, like how the event unfolded or was discovered, from their perspective, or how the event could have been prevented, in their opinion – insights from personnel experienced with the process can prove invaluable during an investigation.

You will gain plenty of investigational leads from your observations and interviews at the gemba – which documents to review, which personnel to interview, which equipment history to inspect, and more. The gemba is such an invaluable experience that, for many minor events, root cause and CAPA can be determined fairly easily from information gathered solely at the gemba.