What is a Gemba Walk?
The word “Gemba” comes from the Japanese word “Genba,” which is composed of two kanji characters: “Gen” for “actual” and “ba” for “place.” The word literally means to go and see with your own eyes the actual place where work is done.
Originating from the Toyota Production System (TPS), Gemba Walk is a fundamental aspect of the Lean Manufacturing philosophy. It involves managers visiting the workplace to observe and ask questions to gain first hand insight into the entire process, and identify best practices and problem areas. A key routine of Leader Standard Work, it’s highly effective and delivers better operational results when accompanied by a Gemba Walk checklist that monitors your organization's critical performance areas.
Like all Lean tools, Gemba Walk can be used in most departments and processes such as production, receiving, shipping, maintenance, warehouse, etc.
Why are Gemba Walks important?
Gemba Walk is a fundamental pillar for companies adopting a Lean Manufacturing approach to boost their operational performance. It enables leaders to go beyond simply reading production performance indicators by directly walking the factory floor to observe, understand, and take action. Here are its top benefits:
Observe progress on the factory floor
In addition to operational dashboards, Gemba Walks allow you to visually see the progress made towards production targets. They allow for proactive, real-time monitoring of your daily operations’ performance.
Detect what KPIs don't show
Some issues cannot be quantified or seen through KPIs. By going on site, team leaders can identify inefficiencies, waste, or subtle anomalies, as well as opportunities for optimization.
Encourage Kaizen actions
By precisely identifying where improvements can be made, Gemba Walks provide great opportunities to launch Kaizen initiatives (or Kaizen blitzes). Direct observation provides concrete ideas for improvement.
Solve problems more effectively
Seeing a problem in context provides a better understanding of its causes and consequences. This approach helps to find more effective solutions and makes it easier to get employees onboard with their implementation.
Increase collaboration between floor employees and management
Exchanges between managers and frontline employees during Gemba Walks create collaboration. This proximity promotes mutual understanding and aligns efforts towards common operational objectives.
Strengthen continuous improvement
By establishing regular cycles for detecting and solving problems, Gemba Walks contribute to driving continuous improvement within the organization. This reduces the cost and complexity of transformation efforts.
Better prioritize improvement initiatives
With a detailed understanding of operational challenges, team leaders are able to allocate resources more effectively, focusing efforts where they have the greatest impact.
Increase employee engagement
The presence of frontline managers sends a strong message that operational issues really matter to the organization. This values employees' work, strengthens their motivation, and encourages proactive behavior.
Key elements of the Gemba Walk process
To understand processes and identify improvement opportunities, Gemba Walks are based on three essential elements:
Go to the workplace
The first element of a successful Gemba Walk is to go where the process is being executed – a production line, a service center, a workshop, a warehouse, or any other place where critical work processes take place.
Going to the site gives you a better understanding of how daily tasks are performed, how work progresses, and how engaged your employees are. It helps you to ensure that work objectives are understood, standard work practices are being followed, and all required resources are available and being used effectively.
Ask questions
One of the main techniques is to use the 5 Whys method to analyze the cause-and-effect relationship of a problem. It’s based on a simple methodology – asking the question “Why?” five times to get to the source of a problem and find a solution.
By asking the right questions, not only do you fix visible obstacles, but you also get to the root cause of the problems. This enables you to implement lasting corrective actions.
Treat employees with respect
If you want your employees to trust you and feel comfortable sharing information – that may not always be positive – about the process, you must first treat them with respect. Gemba Walks should never be used to evaluate individual performance or blame employees.
Regular, positive Gemba Walks give frontline employees the feeling that their manager prioritizes them. The proof: they invest several hours each day in actively supervising work on the floor, being present and available for them.
Steps to create the best Gemba Walk checklist and process
Here is a step-by-step guide to implement a Gemba Walk checklist that is perfectly tailored to the specific process you need to assess.
1. Define your objectives
To ensure that your Gemba Walk yields actionable results, target the areas you want to address – safety, quality, productivity, delivery, morale, and environment. This ensures that you gain insights on all of your company's priorities.
Aligning your Gemba Walk checklist with clear objectives will help you ask relevant questions and guide your actions accurately. However, for more complex problems, the Gemba Walk alone is often not enough: an audit, i.e., a separate, in-depth analysis exercise, is necessary for those cases.
A Gemba Walk checklist is not like other lists that are generally used as reminders. Its role is crucial in determining the success or failure of a Gemba Walk. To remain relevant, it must be updated regularly and evolve in alignment with organizational objectives.
In addition, defining standardized monitoring parameters sends a strong message to employees about the organization's priorities. If all team leaders, regardless of shift or department, regularly monitor the same SQCDPE control points, these performance areas will become defined as structural benchmarks in the company's operations.
2. Prepare Gemba Walk teams and stakeholders
If you conduct Gemba Walks with multiple teams, take the time to clearly explain the objectives and process to all relevant stakeholders. This will help build trust, alleviate any concerns, and encourage active participation from the start.
Share your Gemba Walk checklist in advance. By asking your colleagues for their input, you may identify overlooked issues, blind spots, or specific elements of the workplace that you did not anticipate during the preparation phase.
3. Focus on the process
Remember that the goal of a Gemba Walk is to proactively identify problems and improvement opportunities. So ask questions that evaluate the process – not the individual. If someone feels like they are being evaluated, judged, or blamed, their answers may not be honest.
This does not mean that you should not be interested in your employees – quite the contrary. The gaps to capture may be human in nature, i.e., related to employee well-being, training, skills, etc. After all, the Gemba Walk is a dedicated time with your team members to help them achieve their professional development goals.
4. Record your observations
Every piece of data collected must be recorded. Your list should include space for answers to Gemba Walk questions.
Software such as the UTrakk Daily Management System (DMS) digitalizes checklists linked with Gemba Walks and makes it easy to enter relevant data and information in one centralized location, enabling you to draw accurate and useful conclusions.
5. Ask questions
Gemba Walks are not just about observation, they are also about active listening. Asking questions is essential to understanding the actual issues, beyond what you see. Don't just point out problems; analyze what’s happening, why it’s happening, and how it’s experienced on the floor.
Adopt a benevolent attitude when you start the conversation. Ask simple, open-ended questions that encourage employees to share their frustrations, concerns, and solutions. Gemba Walk questions such as “What happens when...?”, “What obstacles do you encounter here?”, or “What would you change if you could?” can reveal valuable information. It also shows that you value your employees' perspectives, which is crucial for preventing disengagement.
6. Collect feedback and suggestions
Once a Gemba Walk has been completed, it’s important to gather valuable insights from the people you met and those involved. Their feedback will help you not only assess the issues identified, but also how the exercise was perceived.
You can ask employees if they felt listened to, if they think the corrective actions are effective, if they believe that all critical control points were reviewed, or if they have any suggestions for improving the process. This feedback enables you to adjust your approach, build trust, and improve processes for future Gemba Walks.
Consider the Gemba Walk as a communication tool. By gathering feedback from teams, you show that their opinion matters and reinforce the continuous improvement loop.
7. Hold follow-up meetings
Once you have gathered feedback and observations, set aside time for follow-up discussions with the management team. This can be done in a dedicated meeting or as part of an existing meeting, such as a production meeting or supervision tour review.
The goal is to discuss findings, share actions taken and improvement ideas, and decide on projects to implement:
- Identify value-added and non-value-added activities in the process, then eliminate the latter.
- Clarify and document discussion points and items to check during the next Gemba Walk.
- Exchange ideas for improvement and create an improvement plan based on the feedback and observations noted during the Gemba Walk.
- Define a plan to follow up on implemented improvements.
- Monitor results to spot trends and assess the impact of implemented actions and improvements.
This step enables you to move from observation to action as part of a continuous improvement process.
8. Integrate Gemba Walks in your daily routine
Managers must have the necessary skills to conduct Gemba Walks effectively. In addition to having a solid Gemba Walk checklist, they must develop the right active supervision behaviors to provide their team with the support they need to achieve their goals. This includes the ability to communicate clear objectives, anticipate problems, motivate employees, and regularly express appreciation for a job well done or a positive attitude.
To ensure long-lasting benefits of Gemba Walks, it’s essential to carry out floor tours consistently, ideally three times a day, depending on shifts and operational realities. This regularity helps to embed the approach in daily management and maintain proximity with the shop floor.
Here, leadership development coaching is a valuable ally in teaching best practices of proactive management and ensuring that they become an integral part of the daily management routine.
Examples of Gemba Walk checklist questions
One of the most important objectives of the Gemba Walk is to identify gaps by observing operations and asking targeted questions. To achieve this, it’s essential to tailor your questions to the performance areas you need to monitor.
Here are just a few examples of questions to include in your Gemba Walk checklist, based on your SQCDPE priorities.
Safety:
- Have there been any workplace accidents today?
- Is personal protective equipment (PPE) adequate and available?
- Does the team have all the required tools to do their work safely?
Quality:
- Is the product packaged according to established standards?
- Are the weight and branch number written on the packaging?
- Is this the right pallet size for shipping?
Productivity:
- Is the machine speed set to the standard?
- Have there been any unplanned machine stoppages?
- Are standard operating procedures (SOPs) being followed?
- Did the shift change go smoothly and without interruption?
People:
- How's it going today?
- Are today’s objectives and priorities clear?
- Have you identified any opportunities for process improvement?
Environment:
- Does the work environment comply with 5S standards?
- Is there debris on the floor?
- Is there unnecessary material on the floor or between workstations?
Digitalize your Gemba Walk checklists and optimize floor tours with UTrakk
The UTrakk solution facilitates the planning of regular supervision tours that are linked to standardized, digital Gemba Walk checklists. These checklists ensure close monitoring of control points, rapid identification of variances, and effective prioritization of corrective actions through customized questions aligned with your SQCDPE objectives.
Key features of UTrakk allow you to:
- Standardize audits, floor tours, and other information gathering activities with consistent questions aligned with operational objectives.
- Identify gaps during audits and floor tours with questions that assess compliance with SQCDPE control points.
- Collect real-time shop floor data by entering it directly into checklists during audits, floor tours, and other rituals.
- Instantly share results with senior management using a link or download functionality.
By integrating UTrakk DMS into your daily management routines, you strengthen the rigor of your Gemba Walks and support continuous improvement initiatives with concrete information and data, as well as targeted, effective actions.
Use your Gemba Walk checklist to drive real improvement
When supported by a well-structured checklist, Gemba Walks become a powerful strategy for transforming operations and strengthening managerial effectiveness. It allows you to establish a regular and intentional presence on the floor, observe processes in depth, and detect indicators that might not always reveal the sources of issues. This proactive approach helps you make data-driven decision-making, engage employees, and drive results.
However, to maximize the impact of this practice, the quality of the Gemba Walk checklist is essential. It must be designed with rigor, based on your SQCDPE performance priorities, and constantly adjusted to reflect the realities of the factory floor and organizational objectives. A good checklist doesn't just ask questions: it guides observation, fuels dialogue, and identifies concrete opportunities for future improvement efforts.
With software like UTrakk, you can optimize your approach by scheduling regular Gemba Walks, standardizing control point monitoring, and ensuring constant alignment between floor observations and corrective actions. The Gemba Walk becomes much more than a routine; it becomes the cornerstone of operational excellence.
