Gemba

About Gemba (The workplace)

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.

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.

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. by MSY-APICS