GENBA KAIZEN

Gemba Kaizen is a practical guide to implementing kaizen in any business by teaching employees how to pay attention to details, use common sense and work smarter to boost results where they will do the most good.

It is a method of improving operations in order to convert our business into a self-sustaining, continually improving, visually controlled workplace.

In Japanese gemba means real place, the place where real action occurs and where the value-adding activities occur. When the earthquakes shook Kobe in January 1995, TV reporters at the scene referred to themselves as “reporting from gemba”. In business, the value-adding activities that satisfy the customer happen in gemba. In particular all businesses practices 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.

Masaaki Imai says "Gemba Kaizen is when Kaizen is used in the gemba, for which there are three basic steps—pay attention to housekeeping, eliminate waste and standardize".
As Masaaki Imay says “the workplace is viewed with a great deal of reverence in Japan. The place where your product is being manufactured is sacred. In many Western firms, managers treat the gemba as lowly and fit only for lower level employees. So they sit in their fancy cabins and make decisions based on what I would call 'fabricated data'.
I tell them to visit the gemba for a more hands-on experience”. In kaizen management are encouraged to take a deep interest in and to keep in close touch with gemba and to visit it regularly. This is quite different from western practices. In the West it is suggested that the management generally have little contact with gemba. They are largely desk-bound. They are happy to distance themselves from what actually happens at gemba.

After Toyota achieved Just in Time production, they starter looking at their vendors. Their autonomous study group was formed under Taiti Ohno. The group visited gemba of a vendor each month and conducted Gemba kaizen for three or four days. This proved to be very effective.
Toyota began conducting Kaizen Blitz to suppliers in the early seventies, which involved the movement of machinery, modifying equipment, change in electrical connection, etc.

Masaaki Imai first advanced his kaizen theory in his book “Kaizen the key to Japan’s competitive success” in the mid-1980s. He expanded this idea in late 1990s in “Gemba kaizen: a commonsense, low-cost approach to management”, a sequel to the first book. In this book Imai emphasizes how to maximize the results of kaizen by applying it to gemba – business processes involved in the manifacture of products and the rendering of services, areas of business where the real action takes place.
He posits that Japan has succeeded in implementing this philosophy because of the way the role of the Japanese supervisor evolved. According to Imai, Japanese supervisors are given precise descriptions of their roles and accountability, enabling them to control processes on a regular basis.

They are empowered to manage the work and the workforce through specific supervisory skills. Moreover, the emphasis on learning and performing these skills at the actual work site provided the groundwork for the gemba philosophy, a central component of both kaizen and the Toyota Production System.

Kaizen gives supervisors the responsibility of managing the five Ms (manpower, material, machines, methods and measurement) that allow workers to produce the output of production identified as: quality, cost, delivery, morale and safety.
How this translates onto the job floor can be seen in the following list of supervisory responsibilities:

• prepare work standards (job instructions)
• provide training and make certain that operators do their job according to standards
• improve the status quo by improving standards
• take notice of abnormalities and address them right away
• create a good working environment

Gemba kaizen advocates that manager must maintain meaningful contact with the operational side of the event in order to track potential sources of risk.

Gemba is a place where manufacturing activities are conducted, as well as the place where employees have direct contact with customers in the service sector. Gemba can be dining room of a hotel, a car dealer’s service department or a doctor’s examination room. One place that is not gemba is the manager’s desk. According to Imai, managers often avoid going to gemba because they do not want to be embarrassed by their ignorance.

In kaizen management go to gemba regularly. They stay in one spot for several minutes and observe reality. In so doing they learn much. They will identifiy many areas that can be improved with little, or no, cost to the organization. Imai provides five simple but golden rules for gemba management:

• when an abnormality arises go to gemba first
• check the gembutsu (the relevant item)
• take temporary countermeasures on the spot
• find and remove the root cause
• standardize to prevent recurrence

Gemba should be the site of all improvements and the source of all information. Therefore, magement must maintain close contact with the realities of gemba in order to solve whatever problems arise there.

Maintaining gemba at the top of the management structure requires committed employes. Workers must be inspired to fulfil their roles, to feel proud of their jobs, and to appreciate the contribution they make to their company and society. Instilling a sense of mission and pride is an integral parte of management’s responsibility for gemba.