Visit the Shop Floor or Your People Will Fool You! – Genchi Genbutsu

To manage your shop floor (or any other part of your enterprise), you need to have reliable data about the situation on the shop floor. Even with reliable data, the remaining uncertainty makes good management a challenge. Many managers, to save precious time, rely on data and information provided to them by their people. This is a grave mistake! Always verify at least part of the data with you own eyes! You would be surprised how different – and usually worse – it is in reality.

A Few Anecdotes…

Throughout my career I have seen lots of examples of managers being ignorant of the real situation on the shop floor. The following conversation is a real example with a manufacturing plant manager, albeit without source to protect the (not so) innocent.

Me: How much time do you spend on the shop floor?
Plant Manager:  Oh, about one hour or so.
Me: Per day?
Plant manager: No, per week!

Another plant manager visited the shop floor only if there was a bigwig to show around. The plant manager was scared of his employees asking him questions that he could not answer.

Overall, managers usually spend way too little time on the shop floor, and way too much time in meetings and at the computer. As a result, they are usually blissfully unaware of what is really going on on the shop floor.

There are tons of anecdotes for this too. For example, in another plant, RFID was implemented to improve the material control (RFID: Radio Frequency Identification tags, small chips that respond to a wireless inquiry). After completion of the project, a successful presentation was given to management and everybody was happy. None of them knew that the ERP suite behind it was so slow that the workers just ignored the RFID completely and entered the data by hand like they always did.

As a result, an expensive RFID system was set up but not used. Surely somebody knew. But nobody told management. Instead, they provided a whitewashed version of the truth (i.e., they lied about the real situation). For more examples, check my post Lies, Damned Lies, and KPI – Part 1: Examples of Fudging and Lies, Damned Lies, and KPI – Part 2: Effects of Fudging.

Everybody Lies

There are many different studies on how often people lie, usually with quite drastic results. Depending on which study you believe, most people can’t go for ten minutes without telling a lie (Robert Feldman: The Liar in Your Life: The Way to Truthful Relationships). At the same time, very few people in the study realized that they were telling lies.

And, to a certain degree, this is necessary. If you would be brutally honest all the time, you probably would have very few friends. This also extends to industry, where too much honesty can be bad for the career. Surely you have had experience with a manager who habitually shoots the messenger. Other managers seem to believe that good people make no mistakes. With most managers, it is often better to tread carefully.

Even an open-minded manager (like you [hopefully] are) tends to look more favorably on people who (appear to) return the positive views. This is just in our human nature. We like people who like us back. In sum, everybody lies – some more, some less.

No Matter What, You Will Get Fooled. The Question Is: How Much?

Since everybody lies at least a little bit, you will definitely be lied to regarding the situation on the shop floor. Or, to phrase it more kindly, you will get a selective version of the truth (lie is such a harsh word). Some may be white lies, some may be more serious. But there is no way around the fact that some of the information you are getting is less than truthful, while other information is not mentioned at all. Due to the aforementioned reasons, you will usually get an overly optimistic view of the positive side, and little or no information on the negative side. This is, of course, unless the person wants to block or stop the project, in which case the negative side is emphasized.

You will be fooled at least some times! The question is: How much? Your goal should be to reduce the misinformation and to increase the accuracy of the data. Yet, you have to accept that you will not be able to eliminate it completely.

Real Place, Real Situation, Real Parts!

And that’s where the reality comes in. The closer you get to reality, the more reliable the data will be. You must check at least some of the information you receive at the source.

Japanese lean experts often refers to this as the three reals. They all start with the same kanji 現, which stands for reality, existing, actual, current, or present. These three reals conventionally stand for these three terms (although there are many more Japanese words that start with 現):

Gemba (現場, sometimes also written Genba): actual spot; scene; scene of the crime; site; location; sometimes also shop floor

Genbutsu (現物, sometimes also written Gembutsu): actual articles; actual goods; the real thing

Genjitsu (現実): reality; actuality; hard fact

In English, Gemba usually refers to the shop floor, although depending on your value stream, it may be anywhere where it is really happening. As for Genbutsu (現地現物), you may also have heard of Genchi Genbutsu. This would be yet another “Gen-” word:

Genchi (現地): actual place, actual location, local, on-site

So, Genchi Genbutsu (現地現物) means nothing more than to look at the real products in their actual location (i.e., in situ (just in case you prefer Latin 😉 ).

How to Check…

Verify Some of the Information

Ideally, a manager should check everything on the shop floor. Practically, he/she doesn’t have the time for it. Ohno’s chalk circle is good but too time consuming as a regular exercise for managers. Hence, there is no way but to make sample checks. As for that, more is better. Most managers seriously underestimate the time they should spend on the shop floor.

Have a Plan or a Routine

When visiting the shop floor, it is easy to be physically present but mentally absent. Personally, I have two strategies to address this problem. Strategy 1: Have a routine. Walk the same path every time, and try to see if it looks different from before. In fact, do not only rely on looking, but also see if it smells different, sounds different, or generally feels different. Some people can feel if a stamping press is working correctly based on the vibration they have.

Strategy 2: Focus on a narrow problem. Do not try to look at everything, because you will only see nothing. Focus on a particular aspect that is of interest to you to verify some information you received from your people. For some more tips, see also Make Your Plant Tour a Success!, or for a sarcastic view on how to be fooled, check How to Misguide Your Visitor – or What Not to Pay Attention to During a Plant Visit!.

Foster a Culture of Openness

If your people are getting shot for reporting bad news, it is only natural that they will stop reporting on the negative side and emphasize the positive side. You have to accept that even with the best intentions, sometimes things go bad. Focus on a solution, not on a scapegoat. If you shoot the messenger, messengers will be much more hesitant to come.

React If You Are Fooled

If you find out that someone misleads you, you must act! Tolerating being fooled is probably the worst thing you can do. If the fooling works, it is a success for the employee; if it doesn’t, there are no negative consequences. It is your job to introduce negative consequences if you are misled, in order to improve the quality of the information you receive.

Your actions determine if you reduce the number of liars in the company, or if you reduce the number of honest ones. In any case, always keep in mind that some of the information you receive will be misleading, no matter what. Now, go out, look at your shop floor, and organize your industry!