GEMBA Walk in back-end process

What is GEMBA walk?

Gemba is a Japanese concept of continuous improvement, designed for enhancing processes and reducing waste. It is an opportunity for Management to stand back from their day-to-day tasks to walk the floor of their workplace. This is to identify wasteful activities, gain knowledge about the work status and build relationships with employees. 

Taiichi Ohno, an executive at Toyota, led the development of the concept of the Gemba Walk.

 How to do Gemba walk in backend process?

In a backend process Leaders should meet with teams or small group of people rather than meeting with individuals. If Leaders are meeting individuals and reviewing their work during GEMBA; this could be perceived as individual’s work related review not as an act of process improvement. So to avoid this situation, it is better to meet the team or group of people and understand the entire process flow.

Leaders has to be cognizant of the fact that they will have to identify wastes in the process and there are 7 wastes which exists in the process

  

Leader must follow the sequence of steps in order to recognize the above listed wastes.

Step 1: understand the ‘AS IS’ value stream from the team.

For Example: in AP process the Value stream is

Step 2: Leader has to identify 7 wastes.

Step 3: Create a mitigation plan through kaizen activities

 This could lead to significant process improvements.

How to conduct GEMBA walk

•  Leaders must leave Laptop and phone at their desk and should only concentrate on the chosen process for at least 1 hour.
• Leaders must meet the entire team together or in a group of 2-3 people and can ask them to create as is process map.
• With the help of the team they should be able to identify wastes in the process.
• Leader should refrain themselves from passing any superficial comment during GEMBA walk.
• Leaders should listen more and make observations.

GEMBA owner of the process generally the Quality SPOC should ask for feedback in very simple form. The form should have only 3 to 4 questions. The questionnaire should have questions like:

 If GEMBA walk is used as a Lean tool daily then it could build the problem solving engine and enhance the overall performance standards of the process.