Bedford, United Kingdom
Axis Bedford - Gemba Walk and 5S: Driving Excellence Through Collaboration
Our Gemba Walk and 5S initiative has become a cornerstone of continuous improvement, enhancing efficiency and fostering a deeply engaged, cross-functional team. This project has united departments, from frontline workers to senior management, all working together to transform our operations.
A Cross-Functional Effort
The success of the Gemba Walks stems from the active participation of teams across the company. Every week, areas rotate for review, ensuring that every department receives attention. These walks are designed to be highly efficient, starting with a 5-minute follow-up on previously recorded actions and concluding with a 5-minute wrap-up.
Actions are recorded on local whiteboards, ensuring transparency and visibility for the entire team. The simplicity of this system encourages swift action and clear accountability, with the progress of tasks highly visible to all. This exposure has brought great collaboration and discussions during our operations meetings.
A Tool Built by Our Team for the Team
What makes this initiative even more remarkable is that the Gemba/5S program and action tracking tool were designed entirely by our team. This was a true team effort, aimed at creating a system that’s simple enough for everyone, from the shop floor to senior management, to understand and use effectively. The tool includes a clear and simple scoring system that allows us to easily track actions and results, making follow-ups straightforward and accessible for all levels.
Focused and Effective Action
With actions tracked on the Gemba dashboard, our team is empowered to address issues proactively. The ability to visualize and prioritize actions in real-time has streamlined follow-ups and led to more meaningful conversations during team reviews. By combining Gemba Walks with the 5S methodology, we’ve not only improved operational efficiency but also fostered a workplace culture of accountability and continuous improvement.
The results speak for themselves, and we are excited to build on this momentum as we continue to refine and grow our operations.
Axis Manufacturing team building day – Friday 16th August
After last years success we wanted to have another team building day at Wyboston lakes where we wanted to grow relationships, understand each other’s ways of working and focus on communication and problem solving alongside some ‘mickey taking’.
Since last year we have had a re-structure and various new leaders across multiple roles so it was a great opportunity to forget the day to day and spend some time getting to know each other in a different environment.
As always, the day was well attended, we had the large majority of the leadership team alongside Sarah Clough (MD) and representatives from the SLT and quality departments.
The day was broken up into 3 elements:-
1. Build your own Catapult
The group was split into 2 groups of 9 and we were each given the same material and 30mins. The idea of the game was to build a catapult and see who could fire an egg the furthest distance. The rules were simple and for the launch to be’ eggceptable’ the egg needed to be caught. There was some pretty impressing catching and some pretty poor designs but we won’t go into the details in case anyone gets upset.
2. Relay racing across wet inflatablesWhen the team were briefed that they wouldn’t be getting very wet this was quite a surprise, but everyone took it in their stride and fantastic fun was had watching everyone fall over whilst desperately trying to regain their balance. It is fair to say the competitive element of the day really shone through and there was some gamesmanship. At one point, one team member was spotted filling up the bucket with his glass!
3. BBQ
As always one of the best bits of the day was where we were treated to a feast by the excellent hosts, who served up a meat feast and we were able to finish our debate over which team really won. This debate lasted into the evening and through the newly created WhatsApp group but after one event each, we decided on a draw which left it open for a replay next year.
