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
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| 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.