Gemba Walk Checklist: The Secret to an Efficient Workplace

A Gemba walk is a crucial tool in the lean management toolkit. Through first-hand observation and interactions with employees on the shop floor, continuous improvement experts can identify and better areas of inefficiency.

A Gemba Walk checklist helps keep the team on track, maximizing the value of the walks. A checklist also ensures that the managers and leaders ask the right questions, preventing things from being overlooked.

Here is how a thoughtful checklist can reduce waste and boost efficiency in your operations.

What is a Gemba Walk checklist?

Gemba in Japanese means the “Actual Place” or “Real Place,” so it’s often literally defined as the act of seeing the place where is value created or where real work happens.

And merely walking around the factory floor won’t be useful unless it’s well planned out prior to execution.

That’s where a Gemba Walk Checklist comes in.

A Gemba Walk checklist is a list of items you would like to examine during these walks. When performed properly, a great checklist can help you set goals and establish priorities.

Why is it important to write a Gemba Walk checklist?

Writing a Gemba Walk checklist is like writing a grocery list. You need a grocery list, but you can without one. The odds of forgetting some ingredients, however, are higher without a checklist. Therefore, a checklist is as important as having a mega menu or main navigation on a website.

In manufacturing, writing a checklist is an excellent practice to document processes for future training and reference. That ensures quality isn’t impacted and standardizes operations.

Steps to create the best Gemba Walk checklist

A Gemba walk checklist can be tailored to individual department or team workflows, industrial standards, and organization needs. Here are a few core steps for a successful Gemba Walk.

Prepare the workers

The workers can see it as punitive or threatening if they don’t know the aim of your walk. It is, therefore, vital to explain to them what an effective Gemba Walk is all about.

Observe the processes and teams without interfering

A Gemba walk isn’t meant to be an optimal performance assessment. It’s an opportunity for team leaders to understand how the business is working and the issues faced by the team members. In other words, you should focus on the process improvement, not the people.

Ask the right questions

Prepare a checklist of questions to help you uncover useful information when interacting with your workers. The questions don’t have to be hard or complex to understand. Here are Gemba Walk checklist questions examples:

• How are you doing?
• Did you observe an issuer with the established process?
• How can you fix the issue?
• Who do you interact with in case of an issue?
• What do you do to know the root cause of the issue?

Put simply, ask open-ended questions about the process and the team members’ experience of it.

Record your observations

Since you won’t be making immediate changes during your walk, documenting what you see can guide your future reflections.

You can create a Gemba Walk template or a checklist template for your notes and questions to help guide your walk and help in creating a database for historical records and later reflection. You can also download free checklists on the internet.

Follow up

Present the findings to the workers in spite of the outcome. Openly discuss what improvement opportunities you observed, what you learned, and how it made you feel. Invite worker input before a change is made.

Remember, in addition to assisting you to identify process issues and improvement opportunities, this lean manufacturing toolkit should also boost your relationship with workers who appreciate your respect and attention.

Gemba Walk Checklist

We hope that this article was helpful. Just remember that when you do a Gemba Walk regularly, you demonstrate that you are serious about maintaining consistency, quality control, and continuous improvement.

That’s why experts say that doing Gemba Walks should become both regular and standard work, a deliberate and planned cornerstone of leadership in your organization. Also, remember that Gemba Walks offer a learning platform. For instance, you can discuss more on environmental impacts with your workers if your aim as a business is going green.