You’ve heard of Bam Bam, Duran Duran, Zsa Zsa, so-so, tutu, and Reverend Tutu. And now we have... Gemba Gemba! But what is Gemba Gemba?

Quite simply, Gemba Gemba means going to the gemba for the purpose of observing others going to the gemba to ask, teach, learn, coach, and challenge. In this way, the skill of visiting the gemba can be done correctly and then improved, thus assuring a greater chance of process improvement.

Over the years I’ve frequently observed, or heard, people who believe that they perform gemba walks properly. The feel that they’ve been doing it the right way for quite some time, ever since they received a glimmer of information from a book they read, a conference they attended, or a consultant they hired. Plant managers or supervisors might say, “Sure, I go to the gemby every day. I go out to where my guys are working, you know, at the gemby, and we discuss the problems they had during the day and we fix them then and there. Then we might tell the others guys on the off-shifts about those problems and how we fixed them... after they come into the same gemby area.”

 …