Consulting

We view the role of kaizen consultants as being similar to martial arts instructors.  Martial arts are not taught in the class room or learned from 50-page reports.  Martial arts are learned through daily practice, testing your skills against  those of your adversaries and from advice of your teacher.

In the same way, Lean management is learned through daily practice and testing your skills against operational challenges and from your competitors.  Our role is to help you implement operational excellence through teaching, demonstration of new ways of working, and continuously challenging you to improve performance.

The majority of what we do is to help you improve performance through  learning by doing.  We do this in five main ways:
  1. Education both in class rooms and through "go see" activities to build awareness and create alignment with the fundamental philosophies of Lean
  2. Practical training in Lean principles and tools to reinforce the mental understanding with physical experience
  3. Kaizen workshops of varying duration and style to achieve rapid improvement
  4. Visual management systems to make the status of performance and problems visible to all
  5. Auditing structure, of and by management, through daily exercises and checks
We bring no preconceptions of how your business should be run.  We have experience in a wide range of industries, but we are not experts in your industry.  We are experts in teaching and doing kaizen and TPS.

"Give someone a fish, and you have fed them for a day.  Teach them how to fish and you have fed them for a lifetime."
Lao Tzu


We have a vision of what an efficient, high-quality, customer focused Lean operation looks like.  We regularly visit the best Lean manufacturing companies in the world through our study missions to Japan.  We understand the TPS principles deeply, and our global team understands how to teach and implement these principles in ways that are effective in your regional and corporate culture. 

Typical Consulting Focus

We are a team of teachers and problem solvers who have addressed a wide variety of unique customer needs over the years.  Upon reflection, our customers' voice can be grouped into three major categories:

"Teach Us the Toyota system"

Increasingly people are recognizing that Lean is not a set of tools but a philosophy and a way of thinking that needs to be understood and embraced as a whole in order for it  to take root successfully.

We serve as teachers that provide direction on ways to approach TPS implementation effectively, in-depth knowledge of the tools and principles, guidance in practical application of the systems and methods, and the coaches to keep your feet to the fire and your compass pointing to true north.

"We need to improve performance through Lean"

We receive a broad range of requests of this type.  Leaders are increasingly turning to Lean management to rapidly improve inventory turns, productivity, quality, on-time delivery and other key performance indicators.

We serve as project leaders and teachers to deliver not only performance improvement for our clients, but also understanding of the underlying measurement systems and behaviors that affect performance, so that clients can adopt Lean management practices to sustain the improvement.

"Help Us See What's Not Working"

We serve as an outside-in perspective on your business to provide an honest benchmark against Lean management principles.  Our tools provide a rapid diagnosing of performance issues and their underlying causes.

Clients in these circumstances may be completely unaware of Lean and the Toyota way.  We incorporate Lean management practices in the stabilization and turnaround plan that we develop and execute, so that our work is not a one-time fix but a better way of operating.

How to Get the Most Out of Consultants

The keys to effectively using consultants is to be clear what you want and what you don't want, and to know what you are willing to pay to get what you want.  When you have found a consultant that promises to deliver what you want at a reasonable price, measure and reward them based on their performance.

At Gemba, here are some ways in which help you get you what you want:
  1. We guarantee performance for the results that we sign on to deliver
  2. We maintain balance between customers, people, process and profit
  3. We value your time and place the highest value on getting things done properly and in a timely manner
  4. We leverage ideas and creativity (rather than capital) from your team and ours in order to solve problems
  5. We serve you as a team of senior consultants and instructors who have the depth and breadth to meet your needs
  6. We share our knowledge with you freely and openly
  7. We work ourselves out of a job by making you self-sufficient
  8. We improve our work so that you will see value in rehiring us, even after we succeed at #7
  9. We make kaizen more fun
If it sounds like our consulting services may be right for you, please contact us and help us learn more about your needs.