Obeya: The Brain of the Lean Enterprise

Strictly speaking, obeya means "big room," but this lean technique from Japan is helping manufacturers drive big gains in collaboration and problem-solving.
Written by Jill Jusko

If you are a manufacturing organization striving for excellence – and what manufacturing organization isn't – "obeya" is a concept you may want to add to your repertoire. Analogies have been drawn between an obeya and the bridge of a ship, or a war room and even a brain, but the straightforward definition is much simpler. Strictly speaking, "obeya" – sometimes spelled oobeya – is a Japanese word that simply means "big room." In practice, it's much more.

Obeyas provide dedicated space as well as time for coordination and problem-solving, and are designed to minimize organizational barriers, explains Sam MacPherson, executive director of the Lean Leadership Academy. Visual management is a key, with obeya walls typically plastered with charts, tables, and other data or communications for team members to review and act upon. Moreover, he adds, an obeya is a collaborative environment. The end result: quicker, more effective solutions.

"If you think of TPS [Toyota Production System] as being a nervous system, then 'obeya' is actually the brain of the system," describes MacPherson. "It is where that information comes to be synthesized, and digested, and then analyzed, prioritized and decisions made about what are we going to do with this information."

Manufacturing companies like Timken, Toyota, Volvo Group and others employ obeyas as valuable contributors to their lean enterprises.

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