CAPITAL: The Voice of Business Issue 1, 2015 | Page 27

GEMBA

the day’s gemba walks around Somta Tools and
s local companies. PHOTO: Barry du Plessis.
on workers is divisive as it only serves
to highlight the differences between
management and the factory floor staff.
It will have the opposite effect of the
inclusive ethos it is meant to promote, he
warns. Rather, “go into their space with
visual cues that they understand.”
“Respect the autonomy of the person,”
Ballé insists.
The final step of improving the company’s
processes will naturally follow as redundant
or wasteful processes become apparent,
insights are drawn and opportunities for
improvement are found. Get it all right
and you’ll have a company that can better
operate in today’s world, says Ballé.
“You will see a bottom-line improvement,”
he promises. “Experience shows that gains
are made much faster this way — we just
can’t predict when or where they will come
from.”
“It is going to take a leap of faith.”

AUTONOMATION: MACHINES WITH
A HUMAN TOUCH

At the end of the day, the group of businesspeople is sitting around a U-shaped
table at Pfisterer, contemplating the fac-

tory tours together. Many seem to have
come over to Ballé’s thinking on Lean and
are considering ways to implement this
knowledge in their companies.
Wolhuter, who during my visit to his factory
seemed a little lukewarm about the Lean
philosophy, has joined the group for the
afternoon’s Pfisterer tour and is showing a
new interest in what Ballé is saying.
“I had always thought of Lean as ‘Lean
manufacturing’,” he explains, “but ‘Lean
thinking’ opens up many opportunities.”
“This is not a ‘rocket science’ concept,” he
tells me, “but it is a different way of thinking
and doing business.”
I wonder how Wolhuter’s automation
and Ballé’s people-centric approaches will
come together. So I ask Ballé for his views
on automation, given the fact that he has
spoken about how standardised work
is something to aim for in Lean thinking
and how it should lead to employees’
developing a repeatable, effective
workflow. For me, it sounds a lot like the
way robots operate.
“One key principle of Lean in the jidoka
pillar — i.e. automation with a human touch
— is separation of people and machines,”
he explains. “This means that no matter
how fully automated the machine is, the