What is GEMBA Walk (現場)?

GEMBA (現場) is a Japanese word meaning “Exact place where action is happening”. It is a place/location where process can be observed. To understand the process, one must walk the process, actual means walking every step as the process makes its way through.

GEMBA Walk is a great tool to see, understand and explain to others what the steps of the process are. “If you can’t describe what you do as a process… you don’t know what you are doing” nicely said by Dr. Edwards Deming.

The purpose of Gemba walk is for everyone in the unit/department/leadership to walk around their area and find wasteful activities (GROSS – get rid of stupid stuff), that adds up in defects, turn-around-time, length of stay, duplication of efforts, redundancies, employees & patient/customer dissatisfaction. This can be from a patient walking into the facility all the way to discharge.

Following are the recommended GEMBA Walk steps.

1.  Outline purpose for the GEMBA Walk.

2.  Talk to the area leaders/staff where GEMBA Walk will be happening.

3.  Identify the scope of the process – start and end.

4.  Observe where work is done – current state.

5.  Document everything you observe.

6.  Draw the current state map.

7.  Identify gaps by observing or talking to the people who are doing the work-

involve them.

8.  Identify opportunities for improvement (OFI).

9.  Draft Future State Map.

Share the GEMBA Walk learnings with the team, so they feel involved.