CAPITAL: The Voice of Business Issue 1, 2015 | Page 24

GEMBA Dr Michael Ballé explains the components of Lean thinking. PHOTO: Barry du Plessis. achieved a level of mastery. A sociologist, Ballé holds a doctorate from the Sorbonne in Social Sciences and Knowledge Sciences. He is an associate researcher at Télécom ParisTech and for the past 15 years, as part of his research on knowledge-based performance and organisational learning, he has focused on how companies use Lean thinking techniques to develop a Lean culture. He has written on the links between knowledge and management in his books Managing with Systems Thinking (1994), The Effective Organization’s Workbook (1997) and Les Modèles Mentaux (2001), and has also co-authored The Gold Mine (2005) (a business novel about Lean turnaround) and The Lean Manager (2009) (a business book about Lean transformation). He has recently released a new book, Lead with Respect, which is published by the Lean Enterprise Institute. Ballé helps senior executives to draw the right conclusions for their business by showing them how to properly see their company’s operational shop floors and by showing them how to teach their employees the spirit of kaizen — a Japanese 24 | Issue 1 | Capital word meaning “good change” . An engaging character, he shoots from the hip. “I have been doing this for 20 years, people,” is a sentence Ballé will repeat — often with a healthy dose of French “ah, la vache” exasperation — to the sometimes hesitant group throughout the day. At Somta Tools, he has stunned into near silence the almost three dozen Pietermaritzburg executives and company representatives packed into the company boardroom. The businesspeople have signed up for a Pietermaritzburg Chamber of Business-arranged initiative to “Go to the Gemba” — Japanese parlance for what the Australians would call “walkabout” on the shop floor. Gemba in Japanese means “the real place” the place where value is , created, and the aim of going to the gemba is to see what problems are visible and to find opportunities to eliminate wastage. Today’s visit to Somta — the company celebrated its 60th anniversary last year — is also an opportunity for delegates to see how Somta is transforming itself by implementing Lean, a process that they have recently begun.