Gemba Walk, or "shop floor tour," is a fundamental practice in industrial management where leaders go to the production floor to directly observe processes, interact with operators, and identify improvement opportunities. However, without a structured system, these tours risk lacking consistency and follow-up. This guide presents a comprehensive and digitalized approach to Gemba Walk, specifically designed for manufacturing SMEs looking to maximize the impact of this essential practice.
Gemba Walk, a Japanese term meaning "go to the actual place," is a management method where leaders go directly to the workplace to observe processes in action. This approach, a pillar of the Toyota Production System, allows managers to understand operational realities by moving away from reports and statistics to see with their own eyes how work is actually performed.
The Gemba Walk method is based on active observation, attentive listening to operators, and immediate identification of problems or improvement opportunities. Unlike a simple inspection, Gemba Walk aims to create constructive dialogue between managers and production teams to promote continuous improvement.
You've probably already noticed that traditional Gemba Walk shop floor tours have several limitations: handwritten notes that are difficult to retrieve, often approximate follow-up of corrective actions, and inability to analyze trends over time. Digitalization offers a structured solution that transforms simple observation into a powerful lever for continuous improvement.
A digital approach to Gemba Walk allows you to:
The first step in an effective Gemba Walk is mapping your production environment. An efficient system allows you to:
This structure reflects your production floor and serves as the foundation for the entire digital shop floor tour system.
An integrated calendar allows you to schedule shop floor tours, specifying:
This planning ensures the regularity of Gemba Walk visits and prevents certain areas from being inadvertently neglected.
You may be wondering how to effectively structure your observations during the Gemba Walk? This is where our most innovative feature comes in: smart forms.
This allows you to create a bank of relevant questions for your tours, with several advanced features:
During each Gemba Walk tour, the system automatically generates a personalized form by selecting questions semi-randomly, with priority given to the highest-rated questions. This approach ensures a balance between standardization and diversity of observations.
When a supervisor starts their Gemba Walk tour, the experience must be fluid and intuitive:
To facilitate information collection during the Gemba Walk, the supervisor has several tools:
This flexibility allows adaptation to the context and minimizes time spent on data entry.
The true value of a good Gemba Walk lies in the actions that follow. We have integrated advanced management of corrective actions:
During subsequent Gemba Walk tours, supervisors immediately see ongoing actions for each workstation, can update them with comments, photos, or audio recordings, and track their evolution until resolution.
An often overlooked aspect of digital tools in industrial environments is managing connection interruptions. A good digital Gemba Walk system must be designed to work even in case of network loss:
This technical resilience ensures that supervisors can perform their tours without fear of losing valuable information.
The digitalization of Gemba Walk allows for in-depth analysis impossible with traditional methods.
The dashboards are entirely filterable, allowing isolation of data by supervisor, operator, workstation, or period, thus offering a granular or global vision according to needs.
Implementing a digitalized Gemba Walk system transforms this traditional practice into a powerful management tool for industrial continuous improvement:
To implement an effective Gemba Walk, start by clearly defining your observation objectives, train your supervisors in the non-judgmental observation approach, establish a regular visit schedule, and ensure systematic follow-up of identified actions. Digitalization can greatly facilitate this process by structuring the entire approach.
The ideal frequency depends on your industrial context, but generally, a weekly Gemba Walk per department is a good starting point. Critical workstations may require more frequent visits (daily or bi-weekly), while other areas can be visited every two weeks. Regularity is more important than intensity.
To effectively involve operators, ensure that Gemba Walk is not perceived as an inspection but as an opportunity for collaboration. Explain the objectives of the approach, value their suggestions, share the results of improvements implemented following their comments, and integrate them into the search for solutions.
Gemba Walk remains one of the most powerful practices in industrial management. Its digitalization does not replace physical presence on the floor but complements it by providing structure, continuity, and analytical capability.
A well-designed Gemba Walk system transforms shop floor tours into a true nervous system for your organization, capturing weak signals, identifying trends, and facilitating continuous improvements. It creates a virtuous circle where problems are quickly identified, actions rigorously followed, and improvements documented for organizational learning.
By digitalizing your Gemba Walk shop floor tours, you're not just changing a tool; you're transforming an occasional practice into a continuous improvement process that flows throughout your manufacturing organization. Don't wait to modernize your approach to Gemba Walk and fully exploit its transformative potential in your company.
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