Lean Safety Gemba Walks

A Lean Safety Gemba Walk is a walk through the work area (Gemba) that focuses on the continuous improvement of safety. When conducted in a respectful manner, by skilled facilitators, Safety Gemba Walks can have a dramatic long-lasting impact on the culture of a business. Lean Safety Gemba Walks: A Methodology for Workforce Engagement and Culture Ch

While worker safety is often touted as a companys first priority, more often than not, safety activity is driven by compliance to legislation rather than any safety improvement initiative. Lean takes a proactive approach it is not contingent on legislation. A serious Lean effort will tear apart an old inefficient entitlement-riddled culture and

In 12 new essays, ranging from the provocative to the practical and written specially for the second edition of Gemba Walks author and management expert Jim Womack reflects on the past 30 years of lean, and assesses the current state of lean today.He also shares thoughts on how lean thinking and practice can continue to make the world a better place by gaining traction in areas such as government and healthcare, provides practical guidance for how leaders everywhere can realize the full benefits of a lean management system, and shares hope for continued improvement on the path to better work and more value.Over the past 30 years, Womack has developed a method of going to visit the gemba at countless companies and keenly observing how people work together to create value. He has shared his thoughts and discoveries from these visits with the lean community through a monthly letter. With Gemba Walks second edition, Womack has selected and re-organized his key letters, as well as written 12 new essays.Gemba Walks shares his insights on topics ranging from the application of specific tools, to the role of management in sustaining lean, as well as the long-term prospects for this fundamental new way of creating value. Reading this book will reveal to readers a range of lean principles, as well as the basis for the critical lean practice of: go see, ask why, and show respect.Womack explains: - whatever happened to Toyota and what happens next to lean?- how lean got its name 25 years ago; a special essay co-authored by Jim and John Krafcik, president and CEO, Hyundai Motors America- work, management, and leadership -- what is the real work of the lean leader?- don't offshore or reshore -leanshore- why companies need fewer heroes and more farmers (who work daily to improve the processes and systems needed for perfect work and who take the time and effort to produce long-term improvement)- how "good" people who work in "bad" processes become as "bad" as the process itself- how the real practice of showing respect comes down to helping workers frame and solve their own problems- how the short-term gains from lean tools can be translated to enduring change from lean management.- how the lean manager has a "restless desire to continually rethink the organization's problems, probe their root causes, and lead experiments to test the best currently known countermeasures"By sharing his personal path of discovery, Womack sheds new light on the continued adoption and development of the most important new business system of the past fifty years. His journey will provide courage and inspiration for every lean practitioner today.

Taking a Gemba Walk to Go See, Ask Why, and Show Respect is a key way to more actively engage people in performance improvement activities. Even if you currently do Gemba Walks in all likelihood you fall short of what the best companies do. This

Gemba is a Japanese word meaning the actual place where value-creating work happens. Many leaders use gemba only for solving problems, visiting only when there is an issue. Others practice gemba walks on a daily basis to follow up and monitor the situation. However, Toyota believes that leaders truly develop through daily experiences at the gemba. In reality, gemba is a principle for managing, developing and improving people and processes. It is a valuable tool that helps lean practitioners learn the true facts so they can base management decisions on the actual situation.

When it comes to making your business more profitable and successful, don't look to re-engineering for answers. A better way is to apply the concept of kaizen, which mean making simple, common-sense improvements and refinements to critical business processes.The result: greater productivity, quality, and profits achieved with minimal cost, time, and effort invested. In this book, you discover how to maximize the results of kaizen by applying it to gemba--business processes involved in the manufacture of products and the rendering of services--the areas of your business where, as the author puts it, the "real action" takes place.

Winner of a Shingo Research and Professional Publication AwardThe new edition of this Shingo Prize-winning bestseller provides critical insights and approaches to make any Lean transformation an ongoing success. It shows you how to implement a sustainable, successful transformation by developing a culture that has your stakeholders throughout the o

As changing customer demands and shifting world markets continue to put a strain on businesses in all sectors, your business needs every advantage to stay competitive. Many people may think of Lean processes as suitable only for the manufacturing floor, but that couldn’t be further from the truth. Safety Performance in a Lean Environment: A Guide to Building Safety into a Process demonstrates how Lean tools can eliminate waste in your safety program, making it an important piece not only in keeping your organization safe but also in keeping it globally competitive. Written by safety pro Paul F. English, this book explores tools such as Lean manufacturing, DMAIC processes, and Kepner-Trego problem solving and how to use them to increase efficiency and eliminate waste in safety programs. He goes on to discuss value-based management, a technique identified as a leading business model for any organization wanting to catch "The Toyota Way." These processes help you build, incorporate, and sustain a safety program and understand how to get and maintain a foothold for the safety program in times of change. Here’s what you get: Real safety solutions for a Lean environment Methods for setting up standard work for EHS professionals How-tos for JSA and pre-task analysis to help develop standardized work Tips and tricks that everyone can use to jump start a stalled safety program No book currently on the market discusses Lean manufacturing or Six Sigma processes and links them to the occupational safety or environmental science. Yet these are the areas where the need for Lean processes is becoming acute. English demonstrates how to anticipate paradigm shifts in management models and how environmental health and safety fits into the model. He defines what adds value to the safety and manufacturing process as well as to the customer. These changes may include a change in daily, weekly or monthly metrics that can help or harm a safety program. Defining what adds value to the safety and manufacturing process and the customer helps you understand how to build safety into a process, creating a strong safety program.

"Lead With Respect is a terrific book that puts the elements of genuine motivation into a broader context and helps leaders translate those principles into action." —Daniel H. Pink, author of To Sell Is Human and Drive "The Ballé books are a great way to get started or to speed up your pace of transformation, personal and organizational." —Jim Womack, Founder of Lean Enterprise Institute In their new business novel Lead With Respect, authors Michael and Freddy Ballé reveal the true power of lean: developing people through a rigorous application of proven tools and methods. And, in the process, creating the only sustainable source of competitive advantage—a culture of continuous improvement. In this engaging and insightful story, CEO Jane Delaney of Southcape Software discovers from her sensei Andy Ward that learning to lead with respect enables her to help people improve every day. “For us, lean is all about challenging yourself and each other to find the right problems, and working hard every day to engage people in solving them,” he says. Lead With Respect’s timely message brings a new understanding of lean. While lean has become essential for companies to compete in today’s global economy, most practitioners see it as a rigorous focus on process to produce higher quality goods and services—a limited understanding that fails to realize the true power of this approach. This new novel by the Ballés, the third in a series that includes Shingo Research Award-winners The Gold Mine and The Lean Manager, breaks new ground by sharing huge amounts of practical information on the most important yet least understood aspect of lean management: how to develop people through a rigorous application of lean tools. You’ll learn: How to apply Lead With Respect attitudes to the lean tools you are using now so that you develop a truly sustainable lean culture.What specific steps to follow to make lean leadership behaviors daily habits.How to manage with respect through the emotion, conflict, tension, and self-doubt that you’ll face during a lean transformation.

"Mike Woods urges his retired father into helping out a friend's failing company. But for Bob Woods, another struggle to introduce lean manufacturing quickly rehashes production battles that he's long since fought. And not even the senior Woods, son Mike, or friend Phil and his colleagues really grasp what's in store for them."--Cover.