My First True Gemba Walk

I started my career as an industrial engineer for Thomasville Furniture in North Carolina. My initial responsibilities included warehouse barcoding support and veneer plant projects. For the warehouse, I had to learn how barcodes were used to inventory, ship, and receive finished furniture from the various plants in the network. In the veneer plant, I was to conduct time and work studies and also identify improvement projects.

Time and work studies consisted of walking around with a stopwatch and a clip board and verifying a number of things: how long it takes to complete a task, how often people were working and how often they were not working. I was told to take a random tour of the plant daily and spend no more than 30 minutes conducting my studies. Holding the clip board and stopwatch can be viewed in a negative light by those you are timing and studying. I was getting some challenging comments when I walked around the plant to do my work.

I realized people at the plant didn’t understand what I was doing, and that it wasn’t designed to hurt them personally. I was helping the company determine capacity and plan appropriately for seasonal changes in demand.

One morning, I asked my manager if I could take more time during my time and work studies to better understand what I was measuring and to get to know the employees better. He agreed and I happily set out to visit the veneer plant.

I started in the matching department. This is where sliced wood with similar wood grain patterns is taped to another piece of sliced wood, to make a desired visual effect. As I started my study , one of the workers made a personal comment about me. I swallowed my pride and walked up to her and introduced myself. This caught her off guard. I then explained to her what I was doing. She told me no one had ever explained time and work studies to her. She assumed I was an “investor” and was trying to decide whether or not to buy the plant and shut it down.

I assured her I was there to do a job just like her and we started talking about why both our jobs mattered. Hers was to ensure the customers got what they paid for and mine was to ensure customers would never have to wait for the furniture they bought.

Now she was sharing her concerns and problems in her department. She also encouraged others to share their issues. I realized I had a great opportunity to learn what was really going on and to identify future critical work opportunities to share with my manager.

I had to balance the fact that my time and work studies were going to take much longer than 30 minutes with the fact that the ideas and improvements coming from the discussions would pay for the extra time. It didn’t take long to find a bunch of ideas and projects from these discussions that more than made up for the additional investment of time.

Even though I didn’t know it at the time, I was conducting a Gemba walk and learning about the processes with the people who do the work. I have used this approach in all of my work to this day and now teach others to take the time to truly understand processes with the people that do the work. Invest the time and the rewards will more than pay for themselves.