July 26, 2026
The most common outcome of an industrial visit is a phone full of photographs and a notebook with nothing in it that can be implemented on Monday.
This is not because the visitors were inattentive. It is because a factory floor is dense with information and almost none of it is labelled. You see order, cleanliness, people moving with purpose — and you cannot tell which of those things is a method and which is a habit, which is maintained daily and which was arranged for the visit.
The way out is not more looking. It is fewer, better questions, asked at the right places. What follows is the sheet we use: seven things worth looking at, the question to ask at each, and what a real answer sounds like. It fits on one page, and you can use it in any plant in any country — including your own.
One warning before the list. Every item below can be answered with a slogan. The difference between a real answer and a slogan is almost always the same three things: a number, a name, and a date.
5S gets translated as housekeeping, which is why so many visits come back with the impression that the plant was “very clean”. Cleanliness is the visible residue of 5S, not the method.
The method is five decisions, and each one leaves a physical trace you can inspect:
And the test that takes ten seconds: look at the cleaning equipment itself. In a plant where 5S is alive, the brooms and the mop bucket are stored correctly, clean, and in a marked place. In a plant where 5S is a poster, the cleaning kit is a pile behind a pillar.
A kanban is a signal that authorises production or replenishment. The card is the cheapest way to carry that signal; it is not the signal itself, and the card is the part a visitor can see.
So do not ask whether they use kanban. Everyone says yes. Ask what happens when a card is ignored.
In a pull system, the answer involves a consequence: the downstream station runs out, the line stops, and someone has to find out why. In a system that only looks like kanban, the answer involves a person: someone notices, walks over with a trolley, and the shortage is quietly absorbed. The second answer is the most common one in the world, and it is the reason a plant can have beautiful cards and no pull.
The physical evidence is in the space between stations. A real pull system caps work in progress, so there is floor visible where stock would otherwise pile up. If every gap between machines is full, the cards are decoration.
Kaizen is often reduced to a box on the wall. The box is the least interesting part; what matters is the machinery around it, and the machinery has numbers.
Ask four things: how many proposals per person per year, what share are accepted, who signs the acceptance, and what a rejected proposal receives.
Some plants report double-digit proposals per person per year; others report one. Neither number is a verdict — a plant with two proposals per person and a fast implementation loop is healthier than one with twenty and a six-month backlog. What you are testing is whether the system closes.
The fourth question is the one that reveals the culture. A rejected proposal that receives a reason and a date is a working system. A rejected proposal that receives silence teaches everyone to stop proposing, and no amount of posters will reverse that.
Seven observations, each with one question. The right-hand column is what you are listening for; if the answer contains none of it, ask the question again in a different way rather than moving on.
| What to look at | What to ask on the floor | What a real answer sounds like |
|---|---|---|
| Standard work | “When was this station’s standard work sheet last changed, and who changed it?” | A date within the last few months, a team leader’s name, and a reason — usually a new operator who kept making the same mistake |
| Abnormal handling | “When someone pulls the andon, who arrives first, and how long does it take?” | A number of seconds for the team leader, a number of minutes before the line stops, and a logbook with entries in it |
| Changeover | “How long did the last changeover take, and which steps did you move outside the stop?” | Specific minutes, and a story about which internal steps became external — not “we are working on it” |
| Work in progress | “Why is there this much stock between these two stations, and what is the cap?” | A stated limit, who set it, and what happens when it is exceeded |
| Line-side logistics | “Who replenishes this, how often, and how do they know it is needed?” | A trigger — a kanban, a light, a fixed round — rather than “the operator goes and gets it” |
| Visual management | “Was this board updated this morning, and who writes on it?” | Yesterday’s and today’s numbers in the same handwriting, including the bad ones |
| Capability building | “How long before a new operator can work this station unsupervised, and who trains them?” | A skill matrix on the wall, a stated period, and a named trainer per station |
Two notes on using it. First, do not ask all seven at one company — three is plenty, and the conversation is worth more than the coverage. Second, write the answers down in front of the person. In most Japanese plants this is taken as a compliment, and it produces a better answer than a phone in your pocket.
If you only have time for one question in the whole visit, ask this:
“When did this line last stop, why, and what did you change afterwards?”
It is a single question that cannot be answered with a slogan, because it asks for a date, a cause and a countermeasure. Listen to the shape of the answer:
The question also does something else, which is easy to miss: it flatters the person answering. It assumes they have solved something. People who have solved something will tell you about it at length, and the length is where the method is.
Four honest limits.
It cannot replace your problem. A sheet filled in without a question of your own produces a tidy list of observations that nobody acts on. Before you travel, write the one sentence you want to be able to answer when you come back. The sheet is there to serve that sentence, not to replace it.
It assumes you are on the floor. Filled in from a corridor behind glass, every row produces a corridor answer — you will see the board but not who writes on it, the machine but not the changeover. This is why the difference between a visit and a tour matters more than the difference between factories.
It needs permission. Many plants forbid photographs in production areas, and some forbid notes. Ask at the start; a plant that says “no photos, notes are fine” is normal, and a plant that says “no notes either” is telling you something about how it thinks about information.
It is not a score. Seven rows is not a rating out of seven. A plant can be excellent and answer three of these badly, because it has solved its own problems in a different order than the sheet assumes.
What the sheet does is make the visit falsifiable: at the end you either have seven specific answers or you know which ones you did not get, and why. That alone puts you ahead of the photographs.
Send us the problem you want to solve and the industry you are in. We will turn the seven rows into the three or four questions that matter for your plant, and tell you which companies in the Osaka–Wakayama network can actually answer them.
Send your problemOwner dialogue on the factory floor in Osaka and Wakayama with Nankai Electric Railway Group: metal processing, gears, Sakai knives, dyeing, toys, sake and plum wine; Chinese–Japanese interpretation; groups of 4–15; at least one month ahead.
View the service page