Gemba Walk Checklist: 25 Questions to Ask on the Shop Floor

Disclosure: M365.FM host Mirko Peters works at iFAKT GmbH. This page describes the company factually; paid partnerships and links are labelled as advertising.

By Mirko Peters · 2026-11-11

A gemba walk checklist with 25 questions in five groups: purpose, flow, quality, people and follow-up. Use it on the shop floor and turn answers into actions.

A gemba walk checklist is a short list of open questions that keeps a walk on the shop floor focused on facts. This article gives you 25 questions in five groups, so you can pick the ones that fit your area. It is written for continuous improvement managers who run walks or train others to run them. Gemba is Japanese for "actual place", the place where work is done. Use the list as a prompt for conversation, not as a form to tick.

Key points

• A gemba walk checklist is a short list of open questions that keeps a walk focused on facts. It is a prompt for conversation, not a form to fill in.
• The 25 questions here fall into five groups: purpose, flow, quality and standard work, people and safety, and follow-up.
• The first five questions follow the big-picture questions that Jim Womack of the Lean Enterprise Institute recommends for a first walk.
• Pick five to eight questions for each walk. Asking all 25 at one station turns a conversation into an audit.
• Write each answer as a fact with a number, assign an owner and a date, and review the action list at the start of the next walk.

What a gemba walk checklist is for

A checklist solves one problem: you forget what to ask when you stand in front of a busy line. A short list gives you a starting point, so you can listen instead of thinking about the next question.

Jim Womack of the Lean Enterprise Institute is cautious about checklists. In his article Gemba walk checklist he says that on a first walk in a new organisation he uses no detailed checklist and follows each question where it leads. He sees more use for a checklist of detailed questions on a technical walk with less experienced managers. His advice: if you need a checklist, develop one, and make its development a shared task.

That is a good rule. Treat the list below as a menu, not a script. The first five questions follow the big-picture questions Womack recommends. The other 20 are practical questions assembled by the author from common lean practice. They are not a published standard.

25 questions to ask on the shop floor

Purpose and customer

• Q1. What is the purpose of this process?
• Q2. Who is the customer of this station, and what do they need from it?
• Q3. Who is responsible for this process?
• Q4. Is the process achieving its purpose and, if not, how is it failing?
• Q5. What are the causes of these failures?

Flow and waiting

• Q6. Where does work wait, and for how long?
• Q7. What does the operator do while waiting for material, tools or information?
• Q8. How far does material travel between this station and the next?
• Q9. Does work arrive steadily, or in bursts?
• Q10. What would have to change for one more unit per hour to pass this station?

Quality and standard work

• Q11. Can the operator explain the key steps of the standard work, the agreed best-known method for the task?
• Q12. Are defects visible, and where do they go?
• Q13. What rework happens here, and how often?
• Q14. Are visual quality standards at the workstation, and are they used?
• Q15. What was the last customer complaint linked to this area?

People and safety

• Q16. Does the team have the tools, material and information it needs?
• Q17. Whom does the operator ask when something goes wrong, and how long does the answer take?
• Q18. Is anyone overburdened, for example rushing, lifting too much or waiting for help?
• Q19. Which safety hazards might the team have stopped noticing?
• Q20. Is the workstation organised and clean enough to find things in seconds?

Follow-up and improvement

• Q21. Which problems from the last walk are solved, and which are still open?
• Q22. Are problems logged, assigned to an owner and given a date?
• Q23. Are the KPIs on the board current, and does the team know what they mean?
• Q24. What did the team try this week to improve its own work?
• Q25. What is one thing I can do to help you?

Two ideas sit behind the list. First, the Lean Enterprise Institute suggests looking at each gemba through three lenses: purpose, process and people. The groups above follow that order. Second, ask what before why. Its article How to go to the gemba says that asking why too early skips the work of understanding the situation.

How to adapt the questions to your plant

The 25 questions are generic on purpose. Adapt them to your site in four ways.

• Link them to your documents. Q11 asks about standard work. Point it at the real standard operating procedure (SOP) for the station, so the operator and you look at the same page.
• Add the metric your plant uses. If the board shows scrap rate or schedule adherence, add one question about it. A single metric the team understands beats five it does not.
• Add a visual management check. Visual management means showing the status of work so that anyone can see it at a glance, for example on a board or with floor markings. Ask whether the board shows what is late, and who updates it. A workplace organisation method such as 5S belongs here too, because a tidy station is easier to read.
• Ask the frontline. Ask team leaders and operators which questions they would add. This is a simple way to build engagement, and it keeps the list honest.

For operational excellence programmes that cover several plants, keep a common core of questions across sites. Then you can compare answers and see where process improvement is working and where it is not. The companion article in this series, Gemba Walk Template: What to Record and How to Follow Up, covers what to write down after each walk.

The questions also help to find root causes. When an answer reveals a problem, do not stop at the first explanation. Ask why again until you reach something the team can change, and then ask what could prevent it. The aim is productivity that lasts, not a quick patch for the symptom.

How to use the checklist without running an audit

An audit checks against a standard. A gemba walk learns about the work. Keep the difference clear to run an effective gemba walk:

1. Choose five to eight questions that fit your focus for the day. Do not ask all 25 at one station.
2. Tell the team the questions in advance, so nobody feels ambushed.
3. Ask, then wait. Silence is often where the useful answer comes from.
4. Note facts and numbers, not judgements. "Three trips in 20 minutes" is a fact. "Messy" is not.
5. Assign each follow-up action to one owner with a date.
6. Review the action list at the start of the next walk.

Pay attention to question 25. It tells people that the walk exists to help them. That fits the respect the Lean Enterprise Institute describes, which goes beyond politeness and includes setting demanding expectations.

Example: turning two answers into actions

This is an illustrative example with made-up numbers. A continuous improvement manager asks Q13 and Q6 at an assembly station during a 30-minute walk.

For Q13 she counts one shift of output with the supervisor: 140 units, of which 7 needed rework. Each reworked unit takes about 6 minutes.

• First-pass share: (140 − 7) ÷ 140 = 133 ÷ 140 = 95 percent.
• Time spent on rework: 7 × 6 minutes = 42 minutes per shift.
• Share of a 450-minute shift: 42 ÷ 450 ≈ 9 percent.

For Q6 she notes that finished units wait for a test slot for about 25 minutes on average.

She does not fix either problem on the spot. She writes two action items: the supervisor and two operators will list the causes of the rework for one week, and the test team will check why slots open late. Each action has an owner and a date. At the next walk she asks Q21 first.

The numbers are small, but they are numbers. They turn "we have quality trouble" into a measurable target for a team to work on.

Common mistakes

• Treating the list as a form. If you tick boxes while the operator talks, you have stopped listening.
• Asking closed questions. "Is this under control?" gets a yes. "What happens when it is not?" gets a story.
• Asking everything everywhere. Too many questions tire people and hide the one that matters.
• Questioning individuals instead of the process. Ask what makes the task hard, not who made a mistake.
• Leaving answers without owners. An issue with no owner and no date does not get fixed.
• Never updating the list. Remove questions that no longer produce useful answers.

How software can help

A paper form works for the list itself. Software helps with what comes after: keeping action items visible and connecting walk findings with the plan. iFAKT's Polaris Operator is a module of the Polaris production software that brings production plans to the shop floor as time-based tasks and feeds progress back to planning in real time. A shared task view like this gives you a factual starting point for questions such as Q21 and Q22. Keep the walk itself on paper if it works for your team.

Next step

Print a checklist with five of the 25 questions, choose one station and walk it this week with a supervisor. Afterwards, log each answer that exposed a problem as a continuous improvement action with an owner and a date.