If you have the right team, getting their input and feedback is critical to your company's success.
One key way to achieve such elucidations is by the leaders of the business conducting a so-called Gemba Walk.
The Gemba walk, much like the similar “management by walking around (MBWA)” approach is an activity that takes management to the front lines to look for waste, opportunities and ideas that could feed back into the wider approach.
It can often be the case that you lose sight of the detailed work that goes into the very process that you’re trying to improve, especially when striving for perfection. The Gemba walk nullifies this. Stemming the term from a Japanese word meaning “the real place”, it's little wonder that this sixsigma methodology came to us from the Toyota Production System in the same was as many other lean approaches.
It is important to differentiate the concept of this walk-around from that of trying to catch staff out or pull them up on mistakes. This is quite the contrary and is rather a way to gather information through observation and interaction with workers in order to have an engaged leadership team.
Rather than working in a vacuum, by getting employee buy-in the management can decipher what is really happening on the shop floor vs what they perceive to be happening. The result is a safer, more productive, more highly motivated team, and a leadership who can base changes on fact rather than fiction.
Demonstrating this personally in their own injection molding manufacturing operations across the ADIS AUTOMOTIVE GROUP. Jeremy Svoboda and Marc Ammerlaan take pride in knowing the intricate detail in the production line as much as the fine detail in their P&L. Creating millions of components annually for the automotive world, every step counts. Whether that's in a flow chart or physically walking around the plant!
Find our more about ADIS and our approach to delivering beyond expectations by getting in touch with us today.
