What’s Stopping Flow? Let’s Go See!
Now that you’re intrigued by the power of continuous flow, you might be wondering where to start. My advice? Take a field trip.
Get Your Boots On
In Lean thinking, we talk about going to the gemba—a Japanese word meaning “the real place.” If you want to understand where your process can be improved, you can’t rely on reports or flowcharts. You need to go to where the value-creating work is actually happening and talk with the people who are doing it. In Japanese, this practice is called genchi genbutsu. Officially that means “go and see for yourself”, based on the theory that the best way to deeply understand a situation is through personal observation. But a fellow Lean practitioner once loosely translated it as “get your boots on”. So lace up, because here we go!
What Are You Looking For?
As you go to the gemba to see how flow is working now, you want to watch the product itself to see how it is moving through the process, and where it’s getting hung up. Watch the people, too. Here are some common ways in which flow gets disrupted:
Product Piling Up
If you’ve got items stacking up between stations, you’ve got a bottleneck. This happens when one part of the process is producing faster than the next step can handle. The pile isn’t just an eyesore—it’s tying up space and cash, risking damage to the partially finished product, and stressing out the person who has to deal with it.
Moving Product Around
Are people constantly pushing racks of partially finished product around, carting supplies from one spot to another, or crossing paths throughout the workspace? Excess motion is a classic form of waste. It often points to poor layout or unclear order of operations.
Rework and Backflows
When a product goes backward in the process, it’s usually due to defects. For example, maybe a food item wasn’t cooked fully, or a package was mislabeled, or a production step was missed. Rework wastes time, delays the delivery of value to the customer (and cash to your pocket), and erodes morale.
Work Stalling Out
Notice a task that seems to take longer than it should? Maybe prep slows down when a certain ingredient is missing, or reports sit half-finished because someone’s waiting on data. This kind of hang-up shows you where support systems (like inventory, tools, or information) are out of sync with the task at hand.
Exhausted Staff
Work should challenge people, not break them. If your process is causing excessive physical strain or mental burnout, it’s not sustainable. Long reaches, awkward bends, and repetitive strain are signs that the physical layout of a process should be redesigned for safety and ease.
Frustration and Rising Stress
If tempers flare when things get busy, or if people are constantly just trying to keep up, that’s a sign the system isn’t flowing evenly. Perhaps the load at each task isn’t matched to capacity, or perhaps roles and communication aren’t clear.
Waiting Around
Drop by the production floor, only to find nothing is happening? Flow means continuous movement of the unit of value. If people are standing around idle, or products are waiting on parts, decisions, or specialists, you are burning up resources without advancing value creation.
The Same Conversation, Over and Over
“Wait, what are we making first?” “Did anyone order that part?” “I thought she was doing that step…” These are all communication breakdowns what we might consider a defect in information. When processes rely on memory or verbal updates, breaks in flow are bound to arise.
Attack the System, Not the People
With this frame of reference, you will start noticing all kinds of problems – and will likely feel very smart with your newfound observations! But here’s the challenge to you as a leader: as you start to ask questions, don’t blame the people (or imply your superior judgment with a smug look on your face!) If your process isn’t flowing, the root cause is likely not the laziness or incompetence of those performing it, but the design of the work system itself.
One of Lean’s core principles is Respect for People. We assume your team wants to succeed. If they’re struggling, it means the system is letting them down, not the other way around. Your job as an owner, GM, or Ops Director isn’t to push harder, but to make success easier.
You might start by apologizing for the system’s failure. Then get curious, not punitive. Involve your team in investigating the process, identifying causes of problems, and coming up with improvement ideas. First, because they know what’s really going on; and second, because they’ll be much more eager to give their own ideas an honest try.
A Real-World Example: Simple Moves to Smooth Out Flow
Just yesterday, I was at a fast-casual café helping the client study their speed of service. They noticed staff were constantly crisscrossing between the register, service counter, plating station, and the kitchen. Employees were taking a lot of steps, running back and forth, and getting in each other’s way.
It would have been easy for the owner to scold employees to “be more efficient” or “get orders out faster.” But instead we asked: Why are these trips happening, and how could we reduce them?
Employees noticed one source of extra trips was going back into the kitchen to get the dishes for each food order. So the team ran an experiment. Today when we checked in, they had moved the dishes into the plating area, and moved the spices that had been stored there above the range in the kitchen.
The team was thrilled with the change they’d made! Both the cook and the server’s jobs saw fewer steps and less frustration. The reduction in trips resulted in faster customer order completion, with no one having to work harder.
These kinds of wins sound so obvious in hindsight that you might think you’ve already found all such opportunities in your own business. However, they’re easy to miss, especially when you’re not the one doing the work. Leaders might even see such inefficiencies, but not know how to fix them without feeling like they’re micromanaging. By making the PROCESS the mutual subject of examination and involving employees in testing solutions, we can get leaders back on the same “team” as the operators.
Experiment (Instead of Random Change)
So you’ve done your first walk, and you’re bothered by these impediments to flow. That’s a great sign! Don’t ignore it, but also resist the urge to randomly change stuff. Study the process, look for what’s stopping flow, try something intentional, and measure the results. And remember: the person doing the work is not the problem. The process is.
Ready to go see what’s slowing your flow? An outside set of eyes can help you see things you’ve stopped noticing.
A Handy Tool
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