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.

Lean Manufacturing

LEAN is a production practice that considers the expenditure of resources for any goal other than creation of value for the end customer to be wasteful, and thus a target for elimination.

Lean is centered on preserving value with less work.  Lean manufacturing is a management philosophy derived mostly from "Toyota Production System" (TPS) in  the 1990s. TPS is renowned for its focus on reduction of original "seven wastes" to improve overall customer value, but there are varying perspectives on how this is best achieved.  One of the lean "tools" are Value Stream Mapping, 5S, Kanban and Poka Yoke.

Lean manufacturing is a variation on the theme of efficiency based on optimizing flow. Irregular production with ups and downs in production levels would be considered waste.  Some practitioners have combined 6 Sigma ideas with Lean Manufacturing to yield a methodology called Lean 6 Sigma.

6 Sigma Project follow two project methodologies inspired by Deming's Plan-Do-Check-Act Cycle.
These methodologies compose of DMAIC and DMADV.

DMAIC is applied on projects focused on improving existing business process.
DMADV is applied on projects to create new product of process designs.

DMAIC method has 5 phases:

• Define the problem
• Measure Key aspects
• Analyze the data
• Improve or optimize
• Control the future state process

The core of lean is founded on the concept of continuous products and process improvement and the elimination of non-value added activities. Improving the flow of material through new ideal system layouts at the customer's required rate would reduce waste in material movement and inventory. 

PDCA - Plan-Do-Check- Act

PDCA cycle utilized in the manufacturing as problem solving tools, this include to identify problem, to analyze those issue involve, implement and carry out trials on countermeasures and establish new standards or procedure.

PDCA (Plan-Do-Check Act) or Deming circle pretty much used by small group teams to address everyday issues at shop floor.  By working on PDCA, it helps to boost the team member morale as each members were able to brainstorm, work on the issue and solve the problem as a team.  The team members were taught to use the 7 tools in the PDCA process, and they were given ownership to the projects until the project are completed.

Plan - Product design related to the planning phase of the product management
Do - Related to Production of parts-manufacturing of the design product.
Check - Checking on sales figure to verify the target.
Action - Researching on the product method and procedure to standardize them.

PDCA has gone through many improvement and slight change to fit the organization needs.

However the basic concepts are as mention above. The PDCA were repeated once a cycle has been completed until the sales/scrap objectives are achieved.  However the concept of PDCA are required contribution from different section in the organization. They are assigned as follow:

Plan - Design Department
Do - Production Department
Check - Sales Department
Act - Quality Department

If the cats used PDCA, they would probably be having bird for lunch by now.

How to use 7 Quality Tool?

As a Quality Assurance personnel, it is very critical to be analytical the way we solve a quality issue.  It is a stressful job specially dealing with issues at hand, therefore we need to use a proper tool to detect and solve problem effectively.  The 7 QC tools basically are:

Pareto Diagram
The diagram divide problem or defects based on the cause, they are graph according to priority using a bar chart on the X-axis.  The Y-axis represent the % of defect or value scrap which is accumulate up to total as it moves to the right.

Cause and Effect Diagram or famously known as the fishbone/Ishikawa
These diagram are shaped like a fish with bones.  Normally they are applied in the shop floor to analyze the characteristic of a process or situation and a factors that contribute to them.  The four major factors are Men, Machine, Material and Method.

Histogram
The frequency data obtained from collection of measurements display a peak around certain value.  The variation of quality characteristics is called " distribution".  The frequency in the form of pole is referred  to as histogram.

Control Chart
There are two type of variations, the inevitable variation that occur under normal conditions and those that can be trace to a cause.  The later are abnormal variation.  The control limit were between top and bottom line limit.  Collection of data were graphed so process control are easily monitored.

Scatter Diagram
Two sets of corresponding data are plotted to form scatter diagram.  The relation between these scatter diagram represent the relationship between the corresponding data.

Graphs
These comprise varieties of graph parallel bars, lines graphs, pie chart, radar and etc.  These graphs are useful for data analysis and presentation.

Check sheet
Check sheet are applied at any stage of the process for routine check. 

These tools will benefits you in a long run, help you to become more proficient and professional when presenting your work.  Maybe even help you to sleep better at night knowing you did an awesome job!