What is a Gemba Walk?
Date Posted: October 24, 2024
Posted In: Discussion,
From Construction Dive: Just by moving the location of a parking lot, an Aecon vice president says his team shaved more than 1,000 hours of wasted time off a recent, high-profile job.
On the Gordie Howe Bridge project connecting Detroit to Ontario, Eric Lusis, vice president of continuous improvement for Toronto-based Aecon, said he observed the location of a workers’ parking lot in relation to the jobsite. The long walk from the lot ate up time, so the project team moved it, changing it from a four-minute walk to a one-minute walk.
On average, that meant each worker saved six minutes a day going to and from their cars. For 100 team members across 160 work days, Lusis estimated Aecon saved 1,600 hours that would’ve been spent traversing the site.
“Just stopping and observing can be impactful,” he said.
Lusis noticed the inefficiency during a gemba walk, a lean construction practice designed to help contractors see in person how work is being performed, identify challenges, notice inefficiencies and develop better communication.
The actual place
Gemba (also spelled genba) is a Japanese term meaning “the actual place.” The name refers to physically visiting jobsites and being present during a walkaround. The practice was pioneered by manufacturing leaders at Toyota.
It also means to be deliberate, focusing on everything happening together and identifying how to improve, Lusis said during a recent Lean Construction Institute webinar.
“In the field, sometimes that can be a hard thing to do,” he said, acknowledging that superintendents or project managers may not always have the time to stop and observe work.