The Garbage Can Model

Genchi Genbutsu ( 現地現物 ) means "Go and See”, suggests that in order to truly understand a situation one needs to go to genba (the real place) where work is done. It is a key principle of the Toyota Production System.   Genchi Genbutsu is a key approach in problem solving. If the problem exists on the shop floor then it needs to be understood and solved at the shop floor "Genba attitude" reflects the idea that whatever reports, measures and ideas are transmitted to management are only an abstraction of what is actually going on in the genba to create value. Metrics and reports will reflect the attitudes of the management questioner and the workplace responder as well as how the responder views the questioner. It also increases the chance that actual issues and unplanned events will be observed first hand and can be managed immediately; this includes issues that are not apparent to the genba workforce. Masaaki Imai, a Japanese management writer who introd