Standard Work, Visual Management and Gemba Walks

What This Course Covers and Who It Is For

The three tools of the course, how they fit together, and what it does and does not cover.

8 min

Activities: 0 of 2

This course is for team leaders, supervisors and front-line managers: the people who run a shift, a line, a warehouse zone, a maintenance crew or an office team every day. It teaches three practical tools that belong together.

  • Standard work: the best-known way to do a job today, written down, taught and followed, so that everyone works the same safe and effective way.
  • Visual management: making the standard, and any departure from it, visible at a glance, so that a problem is seen in minutes instead of discovered at the end of the shift.
  • Gemba walks: leaders going to the place where the work happens to see the standard in use, ask questions and help remove problems.

The word gemba is Japanese and means "the real place". In this course it means the shop floor, the loading bay, the plant or the office desk where value is created.

How the course is built

  1. 1

    Module 1

    Orientation

    What standard work is and is not, why abnormality matters, and the history.
  2. 2

    Module 2

    The three elements and the documents

    Takt time, work sequence, standard work-in-process, and the four standard work documents, with a worked capacity calculation.
  3. 3

    Module 3

    Teaching the standard

    Training Within Industry Job Instruction and the one-point lesson.
  4. 4

    Module 4

    The visual workplace

    Status boards, andon, shadow boards, floor markings and colour standards.
  5. 5

    Module 5

    Daily management

    Short-interval control, tiered huddles, escalation, leader standard work and layered process audits.
  6. 6

    Module 6

    Gemba walks and sustaining

    Walking the gemba with respect, following up, and updating the standard after an improvement.

What you will be able to do

By the end you should be able to recognise good and poor standard work, read the main standard work documents, calculate takt time and process capacity for a simple process, teach a job using the four steps of Job Instruction, write a one-point lesson, design simple visual controls, run a short daily huddle, escalate a problem, follow leader standard work and carry out a respectful gemba walk.

The course gives no certificate of competence in any external scheme. It is practical training for leaders. Examples use invented companies such as Brenlow Engineering, a machining workshop, and Quorvale Logistics, a distribution centre. Figures in examples are invented for teaching.

What does the Japanese word "gemba" mean in this course?

Match the tool to its job

Match each tool of the course to what it does.

  • Standard work
  • Visual management
  • Gemba walk

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