Gemba

This article describes the term in the area of ​​production and quality management. For the name of the Japanese Foreign Minister, see Kōichirō Gemba .

Gemba or Genba ( Japanese 現場 ) is a Japanese term and means "the actual place" or "the real place". Japanese police officers often call the scene of the crime, or Japanese TV reporters, the location of the reporting as gemba . In economic life, gemba denotes the place of value creation - in production z. B. often the factory floor. Alternatively, every production site (e.g. construction site), every sales shop or the customer service center that interacts directly with the customer can be referred to as gemba .

In Lean Manufacturing , the idea of ​​Gemba is that all problems can be observed directly, and the best optimization approaches can thus be developed directly on site - the Gemba . For example, Gemba walk or Management By Walking Around (MBWA) can be cited as methods in which the management looks for optimization options directly on the gemba through observations. Glenn Mazur coined the term within Quality Function Deployment (QFD, a quality assurance system for new products for which production has not yet started). The core idea here is that, for absolute customer orientation, the customer's gemba must be visited in order to determine the actual needs.

In quality management at Gemba, the idea is that in the event of a problem, engineers need to be on site to understand the full implications of the problem. In contrast to focus groups and surveys, Gemba visits are not strictly prescribed, but highly interactive and situation-dependent.

Principles of Gemba

The following procedure describes the six principles of Gemba:

1. Go to Gemba (the manufacturing site) if there is a discrepancy.
2. Check Gembutsu (people and machines in the manufacturing process).
3. Take immediate action.
4. Find out the causes of the deviations.
5. Eliminate the cause at the source.
6. Standardize to prevent the deviations from recurring.

See also

• Kaizen , Japanese philosophy of life and work
• Inspection (construction)
• Inspection (occupational safety)

Individual proof

1. ↑ Masaaki Imai: Gemba kaizen: a commonsense low-cost approach to management . McGraw-Hill Professional, New York, 1997, ISBN 978-0-07-031446-7 , pp. 13f.