How to carry out Gemba Walk?

Gemba is a Japanese term means "the real place".   In manufacturing the gemba refer to factory shop floor.  It is also the place of construction, work office, sales office or customer service area.  In lean manufacturing, the best improvement ideas came during gemba, where all the error or problem could be easily seen during surveillance walk at gemba site.   Gemba walk is an activities where management or front lines look for Muda or any opportunities for improvement.

Gemba means if problem seen during gemba walk, an engineer or maintenance section will be called to check and review the situation, start the improvement program.

During Gemba walk, it is common to ask series of questions about the work or production that going on for the day such as:

1. Who responsible for the job?
2. How often does QA check the part?
3. What value the work does to the process?
4. Do you have idea to make the job faster? Easier?
5. How does the job affect the quality?

The focus of Gemba walk is to improve process quality as well as reducing the waste in production.  On top of that, by having management and front liner to make a special trip down to production floor or back end office will definitely increase the morale of the workers. 

During the gemba walk, nobody expect to find a perfect process in order.  There is a always issue to address,   new improvement or initiative to consider.  Either way, gemba walk help reduce mis-communication and a great practice for audit.

Steps for Gemba walk:

1. Select a theme for each walk.
2. Question the supervisors.
3. Listen attentively.  This is a learning exercise for the manager.
4. Share what you learned as you walk through the plant.
5. Write a short memo on what you learned and post it for others to see.
6. Follow-up to see the progress is made.

Indy 500 Centurion Race

SAFETY, SPEED, EFFICIENCY and QUALITY

"Ladies and Gentlemen, let start your engine!"

The Crowd

The Start

The Tower

The observation Tower

The Race Team

Team in Action

The Cheer

The Opening

Cameramen everywhere

100 Anniversary Indy 500

The Pagoda

Classic Indy Race car

Signed Engine Maker

Those olden days

It used to have very minimal Safety features then

The safety car now

The Engine

The sleek Silhouette  

How to calculate Takt Time

Takt time is synonym to cycle time, where it simulate the process of producing a part from start to end, or rather from  material input to shipping.  Takt time concept aims to match the pace of production with customer demand.

Takt time formulation are as follow:

T =  Ta / Td

T   = Takt time (Net time available for production in Minutes/ unit produced per customer demand)
Ta = Net time available ( minutes of work per day - this exclude rest/lunch/meetings etc)
Td = Time demand (customer demand) e.g. (units required/day)

For example:, if you work 8 hrs a day for 5 days a week. For a week, you have a demand of 100pcs, Then the Takt time calculation should be as follows:

Takt = 8 x 5 x 60 minutes/ 100 pcs
        = 24 minutes

By sticking to Takt time, we will have few advantage as follows:

• no over production
• no rush on order
• production planning easily done without interruption
• system work based on customer demand
• reduce or eliminate WIP

Lean Six Sigma

Lean for Production and Services
A popular misconception is that lean is suited only for manufacturing. Not true. Lean applies in every business and every process. It is not a tactic or a cost reduction program, but a way of thinking and acting for an entire organization.

Lean six sigma embraces 9 principles, these will in turn transform your view in life as general.  The nine principles required some understanding and practice in order to get you more proficient with Lean.

The 9 principles are listed as below:
Principle 1: Life and business are processes
Principle 2: All processes exhibit variation.
Principle 3: Two causes of variation exist in many process.
Principle 4: Life and business in stable and unstable processes are different.
Principle 5: Continuous improvement is economical, absent capital investment.
Principle 6: Many processes exhibit waste.
Principle 8: Expansion of knowledge requires theory.
Principle 9: Planning requires stability.

To accomplish this, lean thinking changes the focus of management from optimizing separate technologies, assets, and vertical departments to optimizing the flow of products and services through entire value streams that flow horizontally across technologies, assets, and departments to customers.

Eliminating waste along entire value streams, instead of at isolated points, creates processes that need less human effort, less space, less capital, and less time to make products and services at far less costs and with much fewer defects, compared with traditional business systems. Companies are able to respond to changing customer desires with high variety, high quality, low cost, and with very fast throughput times. Also, information management becomes much simpler and more accurate.