The Gemba Walk: A Tool for Continues Improvement in small & medium scale bus body

fabrication industry
Abstract
The automobile industry in India is a significant driver of macroeconomic growth and
technological development because of huge investment, Employment opportunity, People &
Government interest in sophisticated and environment free travel of people. Next to vehicle
performance, Aesthetic aspect and Ergonomic design playing a vital role in vehicle
manufacturing. Bus body sectors supporting to design and manufacture high quality buses &
load carriers that are innovative in style and engineering whilst maintain standards of reliability.
Small & Medium scale industries are backbone of our Country and it is playing vital role in bus
body fabrication. In process mapping related literature analysis, the majority are related to
manufacturing sectors. However process mapping analysis in the declining small & medium
scale bus body fabrication industries by applying gemba techniques are still new topic for
research. A leading South Indian industry is take-in account to identify the process flow in bus
body fabrication sector.

Key Words: Process Mapping, Process identification, flow of process, Gemba Walk

Objective of Work

1. To investigate the current scenario of the industry

2. To identify the process in bus body fabrication
3. To identify the flow of process

Introduction

One of the important activities in modeling an automobile is building its body. Its chassis
is supplied by automobile manufacturers and built by automobile body builders. Different state
transport, private bus operators undertakings are plying one of the commonly use transport buses
to help people travel from one place to other. There are two basic types of products one is
through on road designed for highway and passed road, another is off-road for unimproved
roads. Same trucks are seed in mining, agriculture and other trucks used for wreckers & delivery
van. A small capacity automobile body building workshop is used for trucks and mini buses but
big auto-body building can undertake a range of chassis for constricting and mounting body,
auto-body building involves a lot of designs, wood and metal working process, fastening
techniques, production measurers and safety devices at proper places. Such factories need fully
equipped machines, tools, quality oriented team and more facilities. It is labour oriented work
who is treated as assets. The current situation of Indian trucking industry extremely unorganized
and fragmented because of minor issues like lack of drivers, fresh areas, return lots, on-time
deliveries and accessibility of transporters on the other hand, Indian truck industry is growing
with time and reason behind it is road transport because it can carry over small quantities through
rural and hill areas in less time. Another reason is growth in e-commerce companies. In China
and Triad countries growth is slowing down in truck industry, in contrary India, the Asian
countries and Eastern Europe it is growing the upholstered seats and cushions, and trimming are
placed to give finishing touch to the vehicle. Due to the heavy competition and rules, small and
medium scale industries facing struggle to competitor of Original Equipment Manufacturer
(OEM) industries. The future success of small & medium scale industries depends on the extents
 to which are successful at adapting to rapidly advancing changes in the market. The continuous
improvement strategy aiming to improve the organization. The first step of this strategy is
identification of process and flow nature of work, here Biophysical approach [4] used to
investigate the current scenario of industry and observes everyday work.If a quality problems
occurs in quality management, the engineers and technical team “must go to gemba the place
where the work is done” by Mark Nestle [13] and suggests following methodology shows in
figure 1.

Figure1. Collaborative Research Project Management Methodology

Pick a theme

Prepare your team

Follow Up

Gemba Walk

Focus process not a people

Have an Extra Pair of Eyes

Record Your Observation

Figure 2: Steps in Gebma Walk

Also, The figure explains the basic steps involved in gemba walk to observe process going on in
industry [11,16].

LITERATURE REVIEW
Numerous researchers have investigated the methods of literature review and Hannah Snyder suggest
that, “guidelines to assess the quality of a literature review, Design phase, Conduct phase, Data
abstraction and analysis phase, Structuring and writing the review phase”[9].William G. Griswold CSE,
and UC San Diego says, “the paper will conclude with a recap, including a discussion of the primary
contributes”[21]. Abby Ghobadian & Tom Husband suggest, “To reduce the problems associated with the
measurement of inputs and outputs, both continuous and discrete variables can be used particularly in the
case of cross-sectional studies, since quasi-factors of production such as location of demand may have an
important bearing on production” [1]. Further Government of India promotes Automobiles sector in India
by it’s make in India-Automobiles analysis scheme and it denoted, “India is projected to be the world’s
third largest automotive in terms of volume by 2026, also India has 4 large auto manufacturing hubs:
Delhi-Gurgaon-Faridabad in the North, Mumbai-Pune-Nashik-Aurangabad in the west, Chennai-
Bangaluru-Hosur in the South and Jamshedpur –Kolkata in the East, by 2020, more than 6mn hybrid and
electric vehicles are expected to be sold annually” [8]. Saon Ray & Smita Miglani, analysis the Growth of
the Indian Automobile Industry and states that, “There are three major government initiatives with regard
to electric vehicles and mobility. The National Electric Mobility Mission Plan 2020 aims to encourage
indigenous hybrid and electric vehicles production through government-industry collaboration the aim is
to put 6 million electric and hybrid vehicles per year on the road by 2020. It is estimated that a cumulative
outlay of USD 2.15 billion is required for this initiative. The Faster Adoption and Manufacturing of
Hybrid & Electric Vehicles in India aim at incentivizing the use of E- Vehicles across all vehicle
segments ranging from two wheelers to light commercial vehicles and buses. The four focus areas of this
scheme are technology development, demand development, pilot projects and charging infrastructure”
[19].Further the bus body builders investigate the threat from fully built buses (FBB) manufactured by
OEMs industries, “FBB concept was already gaining momentum even before the bus code
implementation, especially in the school and staff bus segments, over 60-70 per cent of demand has
already shifted to FBBs, but not the mofussil bus and other segments”, notes Dhiyanesh Ravichandran
[6].Balaji further observes “The bus code was being talked about for over 15 years since 2001, and the
implementation has brought uniformity in bus body building, with no compromise on the required quality
and safety levels. Customers may now see our products on par with the OEM-built buses, even helping us
to compete as per international standards” [3]. The term “gemba” comes from Japanese and it means “the
real place”. The Gemba walk is a concept developed by Taiichi Ohno, [17, 18] who is often considered
the father of Just-in-time production.When you walk the Gemba you have an opportunity to ‘See’ first
hand with your own eyes and more deeply understand what is really happening inside your organization.
[14] Michael Bremer, Harrington. H.J, proposed 5 stage process, “Organizing for quality; understand the
process; Rationalize Process; Implement, Measure, and Monitor; Continuous Improvement” [10]. Lee.
K.T. and Chuah. K, proposed a following methodology steps, “Choose the process; understand the
process; Measure the process; Execute the process; Assess improvements”[12]. According to Schweitzer
& Lyons , these management practices include: 1) employee empowerment and involvement; 2) initiating
employee suggestions; 3) facilitating collective bargaining;4) conflict management and grievance redress
measures; 5) expertise training and development; 6) transparency in communication and; 7) encouraging
group activities (teamwork)[20].“To produce a simple sequence diagram JAVA based programs focused
on the reverse engineering of UML sequence diagram from an object oriented programs and analysis of
its dynamic behavior”[15].Gardner & Suarez-Barraza proposed a 4 stage for continuous process
improvement, “Gather data and information on process performance; Set process target; Assign
responsibility and align strategic objectives; Monitor performance and manage the operation” [7].The
paper presents, “a continues improvement strategy, and aiming to improve manufacturing in organization.
The 5S and Gemba walk method have immediate and significant influence on organization activity to
provide the best power management solutions for global customers, it is very important to understand
them and create offerings that meet their safety, reliability, efficiency and sustainability needs [5].Aditya
Bhalla express the benefits of SIPOC as, “Preventing scope creep, Providing management by big-picture
view, contributing to team dynamics, identifying the essence of any process, Generating ideas for process
improvement, Easy transition to value stream maps but it suffers from benign neglect because many
project leads tend to view it merely as one of the mandatory templates to be populated as part of a
DMAIC journey[2].
Methodology

In this study an exploratory case study was conducted in small & medium scale bus body
building company which has been established in Karur, Tamil Nadu, South India, for at least 10
years was selected. The paper records the process mapping in the context of the gemba walk
approach. In total, two methods were used to gather data:

 Direct observation
 Participate observation

For the direct observation, at least 6 visits were made to company chosen. The aim was observe
workplaces where the Gemba walk approach was being applied. During these visits,
documentation was gathered on the application of the Gemba Walk process methodology for
subsequent analysis. This documentation included registry sheets, system diagrams, flow charts,
added value tables. Lastly, an interview protocol and a database on the case study were drawn up
to make the study more reliable. The main contact was the Supervisor; he focused on a process to
which methodology was applied. The plant Manager and 10 fabrication line workers directly
involved in the process innovation were interviewed separately. A total of 6 interviews were held
in July 2019 to December 2019. These interviews strictly followed the research protocol but
some flexibility was adopted regarding certain responses that not interest particularly on the
subject. Each interview was transcribed within 48 hours of being held and was exhaustive in
terms of clarity and data saturation. Everything that arose during the analysis was clarified with
the contact person through mail and by telephone. Our data analysis sought to both ensure the
validity of the construct through the use of multiple sources of evidence and carefully planned
data gathering.

Applying Gemba Walk in a Medium Scale Bus Body Building Company

The observation done in the following 5 stages

Stage 1: Select Process & Gemba team

Stage 2: Walk around floor shop

Stage 3: Documentation

Stage 4: Process Identification

Stage 5: Process Flow Identification

Stage 6: Draw process map of each activity

Process mapping

Once gemba team had selected the process, it then went on to document it and draw up a process
map. The reason for lay in the need to understand the detailed operations in the work place. The
two criteria that the gemba team bore in mind during this step were

1. Documentation of the present situation

2. Identify the process flow
 In this respect, the block diagram is the first step in applying a diagram description tool. Its
purpose is to make a general description of the sequence of a given process. The block diagram
drawn by the team is shown in figure 3.
Purch
ase Receive Verify Place Receive
Order BOM C Order C

Struct
ural
Work Prepare Bottom Kit work
Chassis Preparatio C
n

Sheet
metal Prepare Work Assemble
Work Sheet place sheets C
transfer

Fiber
Work Prepare Work Assemble Glass
Fibers place Fibers C Work C
transfer

Painti
ng Prepare Patty & 1st Coat 2nd Coat
Bus & Dry work C C
Paint

Interio
r Electrical Cushion C Fabric C
Work work C work Work

Exteri Art Work

or Strip C Finishing C
Work Work

Shippi Finishing Visual Water Ready for

ng C C
Work Inspectio Test Shipment
n

*C-Check

Figure 3: Process Mapping, Source: Own

Conclusion
The paper contributes to the limited existing literature on the Gemba Walk approach. The
observation towards investigate the current scenario of the industry, process identification, flow
of process in the context of the Gemba Walk approach has been achieved, working closely with
a small & medium scale industry. Consequently, as a result of the application, a process map was
established based on the results of comparing theory and fieldwork, this provides a quick look
into the relationship of the Gemba Walk approach with other measurement methodologies, in the
organization analyzed and subsequently disseminates this information in order to provide thrust,
guidance and support towards increasing the development of companies, in an attempt to move
the small and medium scale bus body company towards world class manufacturing performance.

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