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Gemba Walk Checklist
Prepare, ask and follow up on a gemba walk so it teaches you something instead of being a tour.
A real, editable checklist below — tick, tap a line to rewrite, drag to reorder.
Tick the circles, tap any line to change it, drag the dots to reorder.
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The sources agree on a sequence: prepare before you leave the office, ask rather than tell on the floor, and follow up afterward. World Opex says its own checklist gives follow-up as much weight as the walk itself. A 2018 BMJ Quality and Safety study by Sexton and colleagues covered 829 work settings in 31 Michigan hospitals. Safety culture scores were 15 to 27% higher where walks with feedback were most frequent than where they were fewest; the study shows association, not cause. This list assumes you are a manager walking your own area. It leaves out area scoring forms. World Opex warns that an inspection form with scores for the area defeats the purpose.
Why these items are on the list
- Pick one theme. Safety, flow, quality or one problem. A walk that tries to see everything sees nothing.
- Review measures and open actions. You can't spot a gap without knowing the standard. Read the standard work before you go.
- Choose route and time. World Opex says to follow the product, patient or paperwork, and vary timing: shift start, changeover, night shift.
- Tell the area you're coming. Surprise walks teach people to hide problems. Say when you will come and what you want to learn.
- Pick one question in advance. World Opex suggests asking it of at least two people. It keeps you from drifting into small talk.
- Check last walk's actions. If nothing happened with them, fix that before generating more actions.
- Keep the group small. World Opex says five managers in hi-vis vests are an inspection whatever you call it, and two people is plenty.
- Bring a notebook. World Opex advises a notebook, not a tablet form: people speak more freely to someone writing a few words.
- Stand still and watch first. Watch before you say anything. Ohno is said to have had managers stand in a chalk circle.
- Speak to the operator first. Operators know the work. Talk to them before the supervisor.
- Ask open questions, then ask to see. A good question makes the person who owns the process look again. Ask, listen, then ask to see it.
- Ask World Opex's three questions. What is the standard here? How do you know you are meeting it? What gets in your way?
- Swap blame for show-me questions. Try 'Walk me through the last late order' instead of 'Why is this late?', which sounds like blame.
- Look for inventory and waiting. ReportWalk calls work piling up between stations and people idle on a machine the easiest wastes to see and miss.
- Ask about workarounds. Ask which workaround exists because the safe way is slower. The finding is the system, not the person.
- Keep your phone away. World Opex says every glance at a screen tells people they are not your priority.
- Don't fix things on the spot. World Opex warns that a manager reorganizing a bench in front of the team teaches them to wait.
- Ask why the process allowed it. Ask 'why did the process allow this?' not 'who did this?' The second finds people who hide the next problem.
- Promise only what you can deliver. Write down the request, give a date for an answer, and keep it.
- Write up the walk same day. Observations fade fast, and the specific detail goes first: which station, which step, what the operator actually said.
- Separate observation from action. Record what you saw, then decide what to try. Not everything seen needs fixing by you.
- Close the loop with staff. World Opex says the hospital study's key variable was whether staff heard back about actions taken.
- Write actions with named owners. ReportWalk says to fix processes, not people: rewrite any action item that names a person as the problem.
- Track what changed. ReportWalk says a walk that produces observations and no experiments is a tour.
Tick the preparation section at your desk, then carry the floor section as a short prompt of questions, not a form. The follow-up section stays unticked until you have reported back to the people you spoke with.
When to use it
Use it before each scheduled walk of a production, warehouse, office or clinical area, and again when you review the walk afterward.