Gemba-Kaizen Events in order to drive Dreams, Missions, Goals, 

Customer-centric KRAs, Annual-Improvement-Plans (AOP), Behavioral-Change & Improvement Culture on Fast-track

Make your organization livelier by Strategic Kaizen-action in 5-days for 

immediate visible results on  QUALITY, PRODUCTIVITY, Enhanced Morale & Enhanced PEOPLE Involvement-Engagement!

Often in daily life when one comes across "problems" (or in a positive sense one gets "opportunities to make improvements"), typically one behaves in two extreme ways. 

One: After giving first-aid treatment one tends to carry on with business-as-usual. Affected bosses thereafter end up 'lecturing' the concerned or at the most stressing "no repetition please". 

Two: In case of a major crisis, one tends to forget working deep on it after the first-aid at the most until finally forgetting-it in due course. One reason for such a behavior is may be complacency. Other reason may be over-dependence on a lot of "data validation" and "data analytics" needed to tackle problems at a deeper level. So, as a natural consequence, it gets postponed. The problem gathers dust until it finally gets forgotten. When the crisis recurs or newer-crises crop up, once again the most affected bosses come out of their den and furiously give 'lecture' to the concerned. The behavior oscillates between two extremes. 

What is the result of this? 

i/ Similar problem or crisis recurs enhancing the corresponding Cost-of-Poor-Quality (CoPQ). 

ii/ In either of the approaches above, the morale of not only the self-n-subordinates goes down but also that of the concerned stakeholders. 

iii/ Everyone gets furious over the indifference of everyone else including that of the concerned service providers: Indifference to the facts that are otherwise easily visible and capturable at the happening-site (Gemba) if done immediately in real (i. e. in Genjitsu) time. 

Many might be unaware that there is a third-approach: The Gemba-Kaizen approach! 

It gives complete relief from shortfalls of the above 2-approaches particularly from the dependence on postponed "data analytics". In addition, it gives more than 70% of sustainable-desired-relief within a couple of improvement P-D-C-A cycles of Instant©Kaizens, pre-empting most of the indifference encountered above. 

What is Gemba-Gembutsu-Genjitsu Kaizen?

The Gemba-Kaizen approach was first adopted by Toyota. It's based on the premise - that one can't swim by reading books, - that 70% of learning and development happens by action on-the-job. 

Gemba approach takes care of most of the above shortfalls. It goes past the 1st-aid-mode in order to make sustainable improvements at root-cause level while at the same time improving the morale of all the concerned.

No doubt that data is a must for problem-solving. But it takes a lot of time to fetch it by conventional means. By the time data is collected more problems erupt. Instead in Gemba-Kaizen approach, there are unconventional ways to 'foresee' most of the "data" ("tacit-data" in particular) right-then-&-there (Genjitsu) by studying facts evident through the hard-material-pieces (Gembutsu) on-the-spot (Gemba) and to use those for "analytics" followed by Genjitsu-action.

Gemba-Gembutsu-Genjitsu Kaizen is a holistic organizational work-culture rather a behavioral-change workshop that habituates employees in bringing about improvements in their day-to-day work and thereby improve not only the  customer-satisfaction but their own satisfaction as well. 

Rather than perception based problem-solving waiting for data, it's a real-time (Genjitsu) action at real-workplace (Gemba) by touching-n-feeling the real-problem-pieces-&-areas (Gembutsu) involving the corresponding associates and managers of the workplace. A result thereby is a number of innovative Instant©Kaizens.

This specially designed action-packed program is used by us successfully in hundreds of companies in India & abroad. It has, inter-alia, assisted both manufacturers as well as service companies alike to improve their business processes/results as well as to improve  

- dialogic communication, 

- morale, 

- empowerment, 

- problem solving & creativity skills,  

- teamwork & leadership skills, 

- trust & adaptability to change. 

It has given a glimpse of improved productivity-quality-cost-delivery-employee.morale-flexibility-safety-health-environment (PQCDEFSHE) almost instantaneously eliminating wastes (by Instant©Kaizens) along with an integrated prescription to attain the balance 30% results, if any, multiply & sustain the both with the help of Distant©Kaizens using Advanced Kaizen tools, if warranted thereafter.

Gemba-Gembutsu-Genjitsu Kaizen Action

It is built around a 5-day systematic approach to improvement. It begins with awareness building. It concludes with actual on-the-job (OJT) visible improvements done (eliminating wastes) alongwith an action plan to sustain the same. 

The introductory module on day-1 generates awareness and teaches the concepts needed for initiating action with the commitment of Top & Senior team. The next 3-days focus on Action-Cycle involving managers, staff & associates of a pilot cell/department and provide them the skills needed. In order to facilitate action/s to improve the workplace, each module may feature simple Kaizen tools in general and specific tools such as 5-S, TPM, Pokayoke, etc. in particular, as required by the KPI improvements in the KRAs and Mission/s in mind.

The stress is on `doing-it-now' rather than `talking-in-air' (evaporating the 'lip-service' thereafter). 

The 5-day training module/s* that makeup Gemba-Gembutsu-Genjitsu-Kaizen programme are as follows.  

Typical Kaizens on a 3-D Theme (See as in 'Do')

Although the workshop is a continuous 5-day OJT, it may be customized to deliver over a 12-weeks time-frame depending on your needs to do it in a Focused-Gemba. 

A chosen Focused-Gemba could be as follows depending upon where you wish to have high-impact in terms of KRAs and KPI results.

1. a given workplace in a back-office, or in a front-office such as lobby in a hospitality or a service industry

2. on a factory-floor, or in a utility room

3. in a field-area of a specific branch, location or a function such as Human Resources, Operations, Marketing, or at Customer-end or at Supply-chain-end. 

                                                                                                                                (*The key milestones may, however, be reorganized for greater effectiveness).

Target Audience: 

A couple of workplace-teams along-with their managers where Top management of a company is committed to implementing Kaizen as a business-strategy to make focused improvements in PQCDEFSHE related identified result measures in a focused Gemba in real-time. 

Prior to engaging above audience in a Focused-Gemba, a 1-day awareness module specially designed for Top-team (decision makers) on 'How to achieve KRAs by Kaizen-strategy' and 'How to choose a Focused-Gemba' shall enhance effectiveness and sustainability of the results achieved at the end of Gemba-Kaizen workshops. 

Benefits of this skill-based approach to continuous improvement include:

1.      Organisations learn to integrate continuous improvement process in their daily business operations as also focus it towards vision-mission-annual-operating plans.

2.      It reshapes behavior & thinking of employees that bring about change in corporate culture evident in terms of improvements they make in their day-to-day work.

3.      It accelerates the improvement process by focusing on building quality of people, to help them initiate, carry out and benefit at the personal level.

4.      Above all, the organization quickly benefits in terms of improved KPIs at the end of a couple of Instant©Kaizen improvement (P-D-C-A) cycles.

Course Material: The book 'How To Enable A Change Process? Start With Self! Take Personal Quality Initiative (PQI) In Gemba Kaizen!! Nurture Team-Based Continual Improvements' !!! by Shyam Talawadekar

                                                                                                                                                                             Typical Improved KPIs 

                                                                                                                at the end of a couple of Instant©Kaizen cycles

Do you know that 'Kaizen as a strategy' is responsible for the competitive success of Japanese companies! 

However, most practitioners across the world discount it to be 'merely a tool for workers'!

A few relevant articles:

• 1. Gemba in Marketing: How Honda plans to conquer India, the world’s largest two-wheeler market