Production System

About Gemba (The workplace) by Andre Sugiyono

The Japanese use the word gemba in their daily speech. When the earthquakes
shook Kobe in January 1995, TV reporters at the scene referred to themselves as
“reporting from gemba”; in the background, one could see houses in flames or
collapsed elevated highways. In business, the value-adding activities that
satisfy the customer happen in gemba. All businesses practice three major
activities directly related to earning profit: developing, producing, and
selling. Without these activities, a company cannot exist. Therefore, in a
broad sense, gemba means the sites of these three major activities.

In a narrower context, however, gemba means the place where the products
or services are formed. I will use the word in this narrower context, since
these sites have been one of the business arenas most neglected by management.
Managers seem to overlook the workplace as a means to generate revenue, and they
usually place far more emphasis on such sectors as financial management,
marketing and sales, and product development. When management focuses on
gemba or work sites, they discover opportunities for making the company far more
successful and profitable.

In many service sectors, gemba is where the customers come into contact with
the services offered. In the hotel business, for instance, gemba is
everywhere: in the lobby, the dining room, guest rooms, the reception desk,
the check-in counters, and the concierge station. At banks, the tellers are
working in gemba, as employees working at desks in offices and for telephone
operators sitting in front of switchboards. Thus gemba spans a multitude of
office and administrative functions.

Most departments in these service companies have internal customers with whom
they have inter-departmental activity, which also represents gemba. A Telephone
call to a general manager, production manager, or quality manager at a Japanese
plant is like to get a response from the manager’s assistant to the effect
that “He is out at gemba.”

One of the problems I notice in many companies and organizations (such as
government offices, social institutions, educational institutions and
hospitals) is that top managers of these organizations are often out of
touch of realities of gemba.

Often, they have no idea what is going on in gemba and are even afraid to go
there. Instead, they receive reports from gemba sitting at their desk and give
orders based on such information.

Some managers are even proud that they have little contact with gemba! If they
realize that the value-adding activities of satisfying the customers are
conducted in gemba, they should change their perception of gemba and regard
it as one of the most important place in the company and realize that their
jobs should be to support gemba, rather than criticize gemba for the
mistakes they make.

After all, management is responsible for hiring and training gemba employees,
as well as providing the conditions of work in gemba. Whenever things go wrong,
management should say: where did it go wrong? Did we provide enough training?
Is the standard adequate? How can “we” (meaning the management) improve so
that these guys can do a better job? gemba is like a window through which we
look into the quality of management. Whenever I walk into a lobby of a hotel, or
a bank or a shop floor of a plant, I can see the quality of management behind.
Assistant Professor Takeshi Kawase of Keio University writes in Solving
Industrial Engineering Problems (published by Nikkan Kogyo Shinbun in Japanese,
1995):
“People within a company can be divided into two groups: those who earn money
and those who don’t. Only those frontline people who develop, produce, and sell
products are earning money for the company. The ideal company would have
only one person who does not earn money – the president – leaving the rest of
the employees directly involved in revenue-generating activity.
The people who do not earn money are those who sit on top of the money
earners – all employees with titles such as chief, head, or manager,
including the president and all staff, and spanning areas that include
personnel, finance, advertising, quality, and industrial engineering. No
matter how hard these people may work, they do not directly earn money for
the company. Fort his reason, they might be better refereed to as
“dependents.” If money earners stop work for one second, the company’s
chances of making money will be lost by one second.

The trouble is that non-money earners often think that they know better and are
better qualified than money earners because they are better educated. They often
make the job of the latter more difficult. Non-money earners may think, “Without
us, they cannot survive,” when they should be thinking, “What can we do to help
them do their job better without us?”

If we call the customer king, we should call the gemba people Buddha.”
Golden Rules of gemba Management Staying in close contact with and
understanding gemba is the first step in managing a work site effectively.
Hence the five golden rules of gemba management:
1)When a problem (abnormality) arises, go to gemba first.
2)Check the gembutsu (relevant item).
3)Take temporary countermeasures on the spot.
4)Find the root cause.
5)Standardize to prevent recurrence.

In this article, I will elaborate on the first item of the golden rules.
Go to gemba Management is responsible for hiring and training workers,
setting the standards for their work, and designing the products and
processes. Thus, management sets the conditions in gemba, and whatever
happens there reflects upon management. Managers must know the conditions at
the plant; thus the axiom “Go to gemba first.” As a matter of routine,
managers and supervisors should immediately go to the site, stand in one
spot for five minutes, and attentively observe what goes on. One can learn a
great deal in five minutes. After developing the habit of going to gemba,
the manager can easily identify abnormality whenever it happens, and address
such problems. When you are in gemba, what you see is the real data. When
you have a good look at what has happened, chances are that you can solve
the problem right there on the spot, and do not need any report.

Most managers prefer their desk as their workplace, wish to distance themselves
from the events taking place in gemba. Most managers come into contact
with reality only through their daily, weekly, or even monthly reports, or other
meetings.

Kristianto Jahja, a kaizen consultant who worked for the joint venture in
Indonesia between the Astra group and Toyota Motor Company, recalls the first
time he was sent to Toyota’s plant in Japan for training. On the first day,
a supervisor who was assigned as his mentor took him to a corner of the
plant, drew a small circle on the floor with chalk, and told him to stay
within the circle all morning and keep his eyes on what was happening.

So, Kristianto watched and watched. Half an hour, an hour . . . as time
passed, he became bored as he was simply watching routine and repetitive work.
Then, he became angry, and said to himself, “What is he trying to do? I am
supposed to learn something here, but he doesn’t teach me anything. Does he
want to show his power? What kind of training is this?” Before he became too
exhausted, though, the supervisor came back and took him to the meeting room.
There, Kristianto was asked to describe what he had observed, together with
questions like “What did you see there?” and “What did you think about that
process?” When Kristianto could not answer most of the questions he realized
that he had missed many vital points in his observations.
There, Kristianto was asked to describe what he had observed, together with
questions like “What did you see there?” and “What did you think about that
process?” When Kristianto could not answer most of the questions he realized
that he had missed many vital points in his observations.

The supervisor patiently explained to Kristianto the points he failed to answer
using drawings and sketches on a sheet of paper, so that he could describe the
processes more clearly and accurately. It was at this point that Kristianto
understood his mentor’s deep understanding of the process and realized his
ignorance.

Slowly, but steadily, his mentor’s lesson became clear: gemba is a source of all
information. Then, his mentor said that to qualify as a Toyota man, one must
love gemba, and that every Toyota employee believes gemba to be the most
important place in the company.

Says Kristianto, “Definitely, this was the best training I ever had, as it
helped me to truly become a gemba man, and this gemba thinking always
influenced me throughout my career. Even now, every time I see a problem, my
mind immediately shouts out loud and clear: Go to gemba first and have a look!”
This is a common training method in Japanese gemba. Taichi Ohno is credited
with having developed the Toyota Production System. When Ohno noticed a
supervisor out of touch with the realities of gemba, he would take the
supervisor to the plant,draw a circle, and have the supervisor stand in it
until he gained awareness. Ohno urged managers to visit gemba too. He would
say, “Go to gemba every day. And when you go, don’t wear out the soles of
your shoes in vain. You should come back with at least one idea for kaizen.”

One of the best ways to stay in close contact with gemba is to live in gemba,
namely, to move ones desk to gemba.

Many Japanese companies have introduced “resident engineers.” These are
engineers who have been relocated to gemba so that they can promptly answer
technical questions asked by gemba people or make some technical changes without
going through red tapes. Often, the engineering department is moved to the
plant site from the ivory towers of the head office. Managers should be
encouraged to go to “Gemba”.

Source:
KAIZEN Institute, Ltd.