Complete a modified Gemba Walk

Prepare for your preliminary walk by completing the following:

Refer back to this week’s Gemba walk presentation.
Survey your department or another area of your choosing. Decide upon where you will focus your walk.
Research both the setting where you will be doing your walk and explore external resources that will inform your setting.

Complete the walk by asking and answering the four W’s outlined in the Gemba Walk Presentation

Utilizing systems thinking concepts produce a 525- to 1,050-word executive summary.

Discuss the four Ws and your findings. Complete a modified Gemba Walk.
Where do you see opportunities to decrease muda (waste) and increase creativity and flow within processes or departments within your organization?

Answer the following two questions on separate sheets of paper it’s important that you DO NOT include these answers in your Gemba walk Credit WILL NOT be given if you do so. Title page is not necessary for your answers but can be used

1,) Review and consider the content you covered during Week Two.

Post a 260- to 350-word response to the following questions

Using Trbovich’s article, identify one area in your organization where you think you might be able to incorporate systems thinking.

Provide examples from this week’s readings and external research.

Cite at least 2 peer-reviewed, scholarly, or similar references.

Format your citations according to APA guidelines

)Read the Gemba Walk Presentation

Post a response to the following question Complete a modified Gemba Walk.

How will you prepare to begin your Gemba Walk?

Grading Criteria

Modified Gemba Walk-Executive Summary

This assignment is due in Week Two.

*Content* *70 Percent*	Points Available 7	Points Earned X/7	Additional Comments:
The student chose their department or other area and wrote an Executive Summary of their Modified Gemba Walk, in which he or she addressed the following: Discuss the four Ws and your findings. Where do you see opportunities to decrease muda (waste) and increase creativity and flow within processes or departments within your organization?
*Organization/Development* *15 Percent*	Points Available 1.5	Points Earned X/1.5	Additional Comments:
· The summary is 525 to 1,050 words in length. · The introduction provides sufficient background on the topic and previews major points. · The conclusion is logical, flows, and reviews the major points.
*Mechanics* *15 Percent*	Points Available 1.5	Points Earned X/1.5	Additional Comments:
· The paper is consistent with APA guidelines as directed by the facilitator. The paper is laid out with effective use of headings, font styles, and white space. Complete a modified Gemba Walk. · Rules of grammar, usage, and punctuation are followed; spelling is correct.
	*Total Available*	*Total Earned*
	10

Gemba Walk

To set the stage for the Gemba Walk, a survey was conducted within the healthcare billing department to determine the areas that would use some realistic improvements. At the conceptualization stage, the need for the Gemba Walk had been slightly overlooked. But compared to the time wasted in redundant tasks within the department and general unproductivity, it was evident that Gemba Walk was necessary. Complete a modified Gemba Walk. The bi-weekly staff meeting in the billing department acted as an opportunity for the survey to be conducted. This is considering that the facility has a policy for each department to hold regular staff meetings in the departments where a peer review process ensues. Complete a modified Gemba Walk.

The review process acts a learning opportunity that supports quality improvement among personnel as well as their development. The process evaluates staff practices to identify successful trends and areas that require improvement. In essence, it ensures staff performance consistency by allowing for consistent application of the best approaches, improving service quality using training and correction plans (Mann, 2014). As such, the bi-weekly review process can be considered as constructive collaborative erudition experiences for the healthcare billing department staff.

Completing the Gemba Walk entailed observing the staff, asking them questions, taking an interest in their tasks completion and completing team audit charts. The purpose of the audit charts was explained to the staff under observation as a tool that would identify their learning opportunities. The presence of an observer (the researcher applying Gemba Walk and using the audit charts) empowered the staff to identify their department’s problems and their possible solutions. As staff engaged within the department at the most intimate level, the department personnel are expected to identify the systematic and broader problems plaguing their department as well as likely solution (Hafey, 2015).

Four key responsibilities were identified for the Gemba Walk. Firstly, a quality assurance manager was identified to review and sign off on the presented correction plans, as well as linking with the other personnel to communicate areas that require improvement and may have been overlooked, prevailing health industry trends, and outcomes as the correction program proceeds. Secondly, a correction program manager who ensured that approval is received from the facility administrators to include their signatures, the proposed corrections are formalized and completed, and a timeframe is identified for each step with defined due dates Complete a modified Gemba Walk. Thirdly, the department staff who act as the correction program personnel whose responsibility is to contribute to the review process based on experience and education levels, and implementing the correction program guided by the existing timetable and timeframe. Finally, the research (compliance manager) who is responsible for ordering the whole process, as well as collecting and reporting the data (Mann, 2015).

All through staff observation and data collection process, it was noted that a lot of staff members were not confident in the audit process. The audit chart left these staff members with a lot of questions with a lot of interpretations offered for each question. Some of the staff were unfamiliar with the audit terminology. In fact, there were a group of staff members who expressed discontent with the review process and considered it a waste of their time since they could be engaging in other more productive activities. Complete a modified Gemba Walk. Still, it is undeniable that the Gemba Walk offered some insight into the nature of water within the department and how improvements could be carried out to eliminate the wastes. The bi-weekly staff meetings acknowledges areas requiring improvement even as they identify documentation trends, issues with resources, systematic issues, and barriers against improvement. Overall, Gemba Walk makes it easier to identify strategic issues for improvement.

References

Hafey, R. (2015). Lean Safety Gemba Walks: A methodology for workforce engagement and culture change. Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group.

Mann, D. (2015). Creating a Lean Culture: Tools to sustain lean conversions (3^rd ed.). Boca Raton, FL: CRC Press/Taylor & Francis Group Complete a modified Gemba Walk.