Muda Hunt and Gemba Walk

Lean production (also called lean manufacturing) is a subarea of lean management that originated at Toyota in Japan in the 1950s and translates as lean production. Lean Production means that waste should be avoided and production factors from all areas of the company should be used economically and efficiently. 

Lean Production focuses on the three core areas:

• Increasing productivity,
• product quality and
• flexibility of the company and its processes.

Therefore, the focus is on value creation and the customer, and waste of any kind is avoided. Likewise, more responsibility and competence is transferred to the employees. A reduction of waste creates an efficient use of resources and consequently a minimization of costs.

The 8 types of waste (muda) are:

• stocks (raw material, semi-finished and finished products)
• overproduction (either too fast or too large)
• transport (production related transport of goods)
• waiting (idle time for workforce)
• committee/rework (poor quality needs rework)
• movement (transition from one place or tool to another)
• a poor manufacturing process (in terms of complexity, set-up and testing)
• unutilized talent (of employees)

In Lean Management we aim to identify 8 types of Muda (waste) that do not contribute to creating value for the customer. One tool of this philosophy is the Gemba walk. Gemba is Japanese and means “the place where things happen”. We offer to guide you through the Muda maze and to go on a hunt for waste at the place where things happen.

The aim of this shared approach to problem solving is to:

• create a shared understanding of the process
• identify non-value adding process steps
• give insights into current technologies for Industry 4.0 use cases
• establish an error culture that aims to find solutions instead of blaming individuals
• show potential for Kaizen (continuous Iimprovement)

We will use tools from the Lean Six Sigma management method such as:

• Brainstorming
• Mindmapping
• Voice of the customer
• Gemba Walk
• 5 Why Method

We offer a site visit by one of our professionals to go on a Muda hunt during a Gemba Walk - free of any costs or fees!

Additionally, we hold a workshop using different methods to identify the key drivers for waste in your area of the value chain. The solutions we offer aim to help you to standardize and stabilize processes and to achieve more with less.

In a prescreening, we exchange information prior to the site visit to verify that your area of operations and your problem scope matches to our solutions offering in an insightful and efficient manner.

If you want to know more about the Muda hunt, contact us through the web form below.