How to Automate the Gemba Board Effectively
The workplace today has vastly evolved with the solutions, methods, and platformsthat now exist to better manage the challenges and inefficiencies impactingtheir day-to-day productivity. One of those tools, not as commonly known, but still highly effective is a GembaBoard. Gemba is Japanese for “the actual place.” When it comes to businesses,committees, or us as individuals trying to improve processes, we often askwhere the actual problem lies, and from there we craft our solution. The GembaBoard does just that – and we’re going to show you how. What is a Gemba Board? A Gemba Board is a visual management tool that works cohesively with your existing set of solutions and systems to monitor how productivity, communication, and the usual modus operandi process can shift to help improve, restructure, or bring greater stability within the organization. This form of transparent knowledge sharing pushes the business to find balance and behave as one functional ecosystem. The Importance of a Gemba Board In order to achieve the benefits of a Gemba Board and capitalize on what it offers, it’s critical to take a step back and understand the true importance of a Gemba Board. It’s not just another software to add to the pile, or a tool that gets implemented but then goes left unused; rather it is a way of thinking, a full mindset for the organization to embed into their daily work to better manage workflows and processes. It all starts by looking in “the actual place” as Gemba states – by doing what is known as a Gemba Walk. The Gemba Walk introduces leaders and managers to meet their business head-on in a way they may not always have the time or means to conduct this full analysis. Its main focus is to be an active learning and engagement experience where those managers inhale everything in front of them without taking a reactive or defensive position. The goal is to observe, obtain, and have open dialogue. Through their own eyes in this process, top leaders and executives gain that granular and essential perspective into the work that drives their bottom line, while making it a priority to let their teams feel seen AND heard. It provides an objective analysis rather than an assumptive one that can often take course when leaders want a solution but need somewhere or someone to hold accountability. How to Use a Gemba Board The value of a Gemba Board is not partial to just one industry or one style of workplace, although there are some workplaces that may benefit more from the use of a Gemba Board and its analysis. Where there is a need for direct transparency on the status of information that may have an impact on results performance, quality measures, or operational productivity, this is where a Gemba Board finds it fitting in creating real value. This may be a shop floor and a front-line team, a triage department and a team of nurses, in-service training and Human Resources, or a board committee and executive leaders. These all exemplify where a Gemba Board is most necessary – for clean, digestible data visibility for anyone involved, at any level. Everyone should play a part in its management to ensure measurables are accurate and only require a quick glance to be fully understood. What Should be Displayed on a Gemba Board? Your Gemba Board needs to work with you and your team, in how you process information, make decisions, and analyze solutions when multiple problems may be coinciding. The best way to answer the question of what should be displayed on boards, is to decide on the areas that cannot afford much error, play a significant role in influencing revenue, and require everyone’s attention, not just a select few. From there, a Gemba Board should leverage the benefits of color theory, visual perception tactics, and real-time information analysis that data visualization also utilizes. Take these into consideration as you decide the KPIs and measurables that demand this targeted attention. As for the specific columns and rows to include in your Gemba Board for tracking and keeping everyone accountable, here are some Gemba board examples of column title ideas: 5 Tips for Starting a Gemba Board Now that you know what’s valuable to include, it’s time to build your process and analysis. Looking to get started? Here at Bearex we have 5 tips that will get you going on your first Gemba Board layout. Tip #1 – Keep it Active Talk the talk, and walk the walk. Do not neglect your Gemba Board after the initial efforts that went into the evaluation, observation, and engagement process by those on your team. Considering the fact everyone will be looking at this on a daily basis so you need to ensure the data remains timely and accurate. This also means your Gemba Board too should receive an analysis from time to time, asking whether you should measure anything differently, share it in a new way, or create a new category altogether if deemed necessary. Tip #2 – Make it Engaging Since the whole point of a Gemba Board is to keep it up for constant awareness, you also want to keep in mind the risk of letting it go hidden because it becomes habitual. It is also a people management tool, not with the same individual improvement purpose of performance reviews, but it should inspire communication and drive accountability. When you analyze your measurables and processes, take time to assess your people too and how different departments may take turns sharing top insights or how varying levels within a team can use it to facilitate discussion. Tip #3 – Encourage Collaboration This tip is most valuable at the beginning setup stages of your Gemba Board, and can even be talked about during the Gemba Walk process. When employees and managers talk through pain points, daily action, and workflow status, make it known that everyone’s opinion can also go into the contents of the boards. Every role and