DailyKaizen

This last week I had the opportunity to spend a lot of time on the production floor observing work in progress.  It was a long time past due.  I spent several hours on process walks following insurance claims and I also got the opportunity to listen to phone calls from our customers.  Over the last month I seem to spend most of my days in a daze of back to back meetings, trainings, etc.  It was about time that I re-calibrated and reminded myself what is important. 

What I found on the floor was encouraging and daunting at the same time.  Managers and staff are far more upbeat then when we first started.  Most have now been touched by our training efforts and are now in the midst of using their new tools to create standard work and make PDCA improvements.  The inital noise and fear for the most part has been replaced by excitement.  At the same time I felt overwhelmed by the task at hand.  Our organization is a complex one, but everything is connected.  By going to Gemba in one part of the organization it is easy to get a reading on the whole and what I felt was a real urgency for us to demonstrate success and to do it fast.   The organization is looking to the Model Line to show it “how” to succeed in an every more difficult business climate, yet, success does not happen over night in a Lean transformation.   Will will move as fast as we can this year and hope that this is sufficent.

Here is a quote from someone unknown at Toyota that describes very much my experience in the Gemba:

“You can understand everything about a company that is important by observing from a good spot on the plant floor.”

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