1. GEMBA WALK STAGE
Across all stages
2. BRIEF DESCRIPTION
Waste Elimination is one of the core concepts of lean thinking. It encourages every employee to seek and systematically eliminate wasteful activities from the company’s processes. Waste is classified in the following 8 categories:
Inventory: build-up of information, data, projects, parts or goods
Mistakes & Corrections: tasks that require additional time and resources to fix, after the process or task has already been executed/completed
Motion: task-switching and unnecessary physical movement of people, information, parts or machines that do not add value to the process, product or service
Overprocessing: doing unnecessary processing on a task/product or doing an unnecessary activity
Overproduction: creating more than a customer (internal or external) requires
Transportation: transfer of information, materials, parts and work in progress from one point to another
Unused assets (people, knowledge and tools): poor management or underutilizing of valuable assets such as people, knowledge, tools, resource capabilities, partners and others
Waiting: waiting for resources, parts, decisions or information needed. Waiting occurs whenever a task or work is interrupted by a factor other than those in the value stream
3. HOW TO USE WASTE ELIMINATION IN THE GEMBA WALK
Waste Elimination is one of the key supporting practices of Gemba Walks enabled by the Gemba team that encourages all employees to systematically remove waste and streamline activities in their day-to-day processes as part of standard work, and to deliver value (product or service) in a more efficient and quicker way. The Gemba team identifies the waste during the Gemba Walk by observing the process steps, questioning the process continuously and highlighting the waste categories to employees.
4. ROLES AND ACTIVITIES
Leader: Encourages waste identification and elimination, promotes and empowers employees to continuously look for waste, guarantees resources for waste elimination, escalates more difficult waste elimination activities to Kaizen projects
Facilitator: Provides training in waste elimination, provides tools to remind employees about waste categories
Team member: Understands waste typologies, identifies the waste activities, eliminates waste, collaborates in Kaizen projects
5. EXPECTED BENEFITS FOR THE GEMBA WALK
Supports continuous problem-solving
Leverages process knowledge to streamline activities
Empowers employees to propose and execute improvement activities
Reduces process and knowledge waste
6. ORGANIZATIONS THAT SYSTEMATICALLY REDUCE PROCESS WASTE
Airbus Defence and Space, Barry Callebaut, Bocar Group, CEMEX, IMC, Interface, Rolls-Royce Motor Cars, Swisscom and Thermo Fisher Scientific