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June 23, 2011 The Gemba Walk Jim Womack Senior Advisor, Lean Enterprise Institute 2
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Today s Presenter Jim Womack Founder & Senior Advisor, Lean Enterprise Institute (LEI), a nonprofit ofit education, publishing, conference ence & research company; founded in 1997 to help companies create more value & eliminate waste Co-author of lean classics: Lean Solutions (Simon & Schuster) Seeing The Whole: mapping the extended value stream (LEI) Lean Thinking (Simon & Schuster) The Machine That Changed the World (Simon & Schuster) Commentator & Keynoter on management issues Author of 100+ essays and articles on management 4
Jim Womack s Latest Book Gemba Walks (LEI, March 2011) Collection of eletters and essays; updated & new material Available now as a book and ebook Read & download selected essays: lean.org 5
Bring Jim Womack to Your Gemba Have the leading lean management thinker help you and your team: Tie together Purpose, Process, People Develop the all-important horizontal view of value Frame problems in new ways Assess your progress Get details at: Lean.org/Womack 6
Lean.org/Womack A new mini-site on lean.org focused on gemba experiences Featuring new columns from Jim Womack A wall to share experiences, ask questions, and offer advise to others in the community A repository for articles and videos about going to the gemba And more 7
June 23, 2011 The Gemba Walk Jim Womack Senior Advisor, Lean Enterprise Institute 8
The Gemba Walk The purpose is to grasp the situation: Go see Ask why Show respect When there is an issue (a problem ) or An opportunity/need to improve 9
Who Should Gemba Walk? Someone at a higher level or with a broad span of responsibility. Who should: Observe the actual work being done to create value and achieve some organizational (and customer) purpose Focus on a particular process (value stream) Start at one end & walk to the other Engage the people touching the process 10
Who Should Gemba Walk? Line managers, to grasp the situation in processes over which they have authority Individuals taking responsibility for understanding and improving processes over which they have no authority Value stream manager (or responsible ) Improvement team members Consultants Me! 11
Things to Avoid While Walking Doing harm! Giving answers! Management by walking around Going alone 12
Focus for Gemba Walks Technical ( Taking a Value-Stream Walk at Firm A ) Social ( Making Everyone Whole ) Organizational ( Becoming Horizontal in a Vertical World ) For the remainder of this webinar let me focus on the organizational gemba walk. 13
Three Simple Observations Value streams in all industries flow horizontally across complex organizations But Almost all complex organizations are vertical in orientation In consequence, smooth, rapid, waste- free flow ( = lean) is difficult to achieve 14
Vertical Orientation of the World 15
What This Means Lean thinkers now need to learn to: Think horizontally ( = see the flows from end-to-end) Act horizontally ( = collaborate across verticals to optimize the flows) To provide ever more perfect value with less time, effort & cost (waste) = lean Taking a gemba walk is a great way to learn! 16
Horizontal Focus for the World 17
Changing Focal Planes Is Hard We struggle with authority (vertical) versus responsibility (horizontal) (Matrices simply create conflicts of horizontal versus vertical authority) We lack a context (and a mechanism) for a creative conversation to optimize the horizontal flows Gemba walks can help create the context. 18
Authority vs. Responsibility We all understand (and seek) authority, a vertical concept. We neither understand nor feel comfortable with responsibility as a horizontal concept. But We can t turn organizations sideways. So we need to experiment with assigning responsibility for value streams to individuals with no authority who can lead the gemba walks! 19
A Context for a Conversation The walk should lead to a conversation across the verticals about: Current performance of value streams The gap between current & needed performance to achieve a purpose Root t cause(s) of the gap The most promising countermeasures to close the gap Who must do what when to introduce & sustain the countermeasures 20
Why This Is So Hard The conversation uncovers all of the contradictions and conflicts between the verticals. Most senior managers have no means to see their core processes, are paralyzed by conflicts between the verticals, and don t know how to respond (so they don t and the most powerful vertical wins!) 21
Mechanism to Help the Conversation While walking, agree to create a valuestream map showing the performance of every step in the process/value stream: Engaging everyone touching the process Embedded in an A3 to permit PDCA Then assg assign someone e the responsibility sb to periodically repeat gemba walks along every value stream.forever! 22
What Senior Managers Must Do Listen to the value stream conversations As necessary, go see (join a walk), ask why, and show respect Avoid giving answers; just ask questions! 23
What Senior Managers Must Do Hold joint conversations with the leaders of the verticals (who still have authority) and those assigned responsibility for the horizontals on how the behavior and mission of each vertical must change to optimize the horizontal flow of value. 24
Do We Know HowtoDoThisToday? Today? No! So what we need now is: Horizontal, cross-vertical gemba walks, leading to experiments with ways to optimize different types of horizontals ( The life of lean is experiments. ) Wide and rapid sharing of findings I ll try to do my part as I continue my gemba walks and share my findings! 25
The Gemba Walk Questions & Answers 26
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