The name "Gemba Tales" is borrowed from Mark Hamel's two Shingo Prize-winning books, Kaizen Event Fieldbook and Lean Math within which there are dozens of tales. Each tale is based upon the experienced (some successful, some not) of the author and other lean practitioners and shared for the purpose of providing insight into the application of certain lean concepts. The purpose of this blog is really no different, just a bigger community for sharing and learning.
With all due respect to Johnny Cash and his song, “You’ll Never Walk Alone,” most of the time, you SHOULD walk alone…at least when executing your gemba walk leader standard work.
I know that sounds anti-social and in direct contradiction to the sentiments of teamwork and coaching, but it’s not. Let me explain.
Mention the term “gemba walk” among a group of lean practitioners and there will likely be immediate acknowledgement. We’ve all heard of gemba walks, right?
All leaders should do them.
Many do not.
Many do…but certainly not in the same way and not necessarily for the same reason.
The Lean Effect podcast, which is hosted and produced by Mark DeJong, recently released an interview with Mark Hamel, entitled Building Lean Organizations: Insights from Award-Winning Lean Expert Mark Hamel. Really, my mother had no influence on title creation.
We can reasonably characterize the people-related principles of lean by three leadership behaviors:
Situation. A multi-national manufacturer was implementing a lean management system (LMS) in a phased manner within one of their facil
I am halfway through reading, what I consider (thus far), an important lean book.
What do bus schedules have to do with a lean management system?
Quite a bit…even though, obviously, the notion of a bus schedule is more metaph
I remember, years ago, watching my oldest child struggle in his attempt to loosen a bolt. This was one of those all too few, brief, and shining child-rearing moments where I could easily and quickly share some trusty words of wisdom. “Righty tighty, lefty loosey.” I’m pretty sure that my son’s response was somewhere in the vicinity of, “Huh?” Not the effect that I was looking for necessarily. …Nevertheless, I’m going to try to apply the same advice, but to a different subject (totally without threaded parts). Strategy deployment (a.k.a. policy deployment, hoshin kanri, etc.). Huh?
Larry Loucka, a close friend and colleague, recently pointed me to a February 16th Wall Street Journal (WSJ) article.
Now, before you roll your eyes and give me the WSJ-isn’t known-for-getting-the-lean-thing-right look, hear me out. What the Journal published is really, really good stuff…even if lean, and 5S in particular, was the furthest thing from their brilliant mind(s).
As some of you may recall, I launched a new blog called Lean Math back in February with a couple of my buddies. In my humble opinion, I think that the ever-growing content is pretty useful stuff for lean practitioners.
In any event, I just wanted to share some basic holiday lean math...
