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Recently President Rick Wylie and other Villara Managers engaged in a Gemba Walk. What is a Gemba Walk you ask? It’s a chance to observe an environment and see what happens in it. The word gemba comes from the Japanese term gembutsu which means “real thing” or “real place”. The development of the Gemba Walk concept was led by Taiichi Ohno, an execuve at Toyota, the originator of the Lean Process movement . The idea behind a Gemba Walk is that you go to the place where the core work takes place, which for a company like Villara means the manufacturing floor. The idea is in-person observaon of where work is being done and interacng with those who do the work. This process allows for the team to see what is working well and where we could improve things. This allows us to implement Lean thinking and improve our producvity; but it also allows management the opportunity to beer understand what it’s like to walk in the shoes of staff. Rick and his team were able to talk with workers and see how they accomplish their work. The intenon is not to look for problems, but rather, to find ways to further improvements and innovate me and money saving techniques. This was an opportunity for upper management to express their interest in what workers are doing and gain a beer understanding of their day-to-day efforts. Gemba creates a strengthening of team culture through observaon and deep interest, while leaving assumpons and opinions at the office. Dwight Eisenhower said, “Farming looks mighty easy when your plow is a pencil and you’re 1,000 miles away from a cornfield.” Rick and the Villara management went and stood in the cornfield and helped do some plowing, and it gave them new insight. “What a great couple of days I spent, meeng great Villara employees doing great work for our company and our customers. Many of these guys have incorporated innovave processes and tools into their work, and our goal is to capture all of those great individual ideas and roll them up into “Standard Operang Procedures” that we can share with all of the team members throughout our company. When we combine the best ideas and pracces of all of our great employees, we are absolutely unbeatable! More to come!” - Rick Wylie We look forward to seeing what is to come and how the Gemba Walks and Lean iniaves can help make Villara the most producve and best place to work!
