site documentation

About Gemba Works Lab

D-OPS-01 | First published 2026-07-18 | Revised 2026-08-02

Operator

Gemba Works Lab (GWL) is published by the Gemba Works editorial team, an independent publishing operation based in Japan. Our purpose is simple: a large body of practical manufacturing know-how — kaizen, 5S, standard work, skills transfer — is documented primarily in Japanese, and much of what reaches English readers arrives as slogans stripped of the working detail. We translate the practice, not just the vocabulary, for plant managers and improvement leads at small and mid-size U.S. manufacturers.

Editorial policy: how articles are produced

Articles are drafted with AI assistance and reviewed by a human editor before publication. The editorial workflow is: (1) topic and claims are outlined against primary sources — U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics, OSHA, NIST Manufacturing Extension Partnership, and official vendor documentation; (2) an AI-assisted draft is produced; (3) a human editor verifies every statistic against its cited source, marks estimates as estimates, and removes anything we cannot support before the page goes live. Every article carries a document number (for example D-KAI-01) and a first-published/revised data line.

What we cannot do (our honest limits)

We do not have certified safety professionals or engineers on staff. Where a decision needs professional judgment — safety compliance, equipment specification, employment law — we say so and point you to the official body (for example OSHA or your regional NIST MEP center) instead of guessing.
We do not publish reviews or "hands-on" impressions of software or equipment we have not actually used. Comparisons are built from official, publicly available documentation only.
We do not publish invented case studies, composite "customer stories," or testimonials. When we describe an improvement pattern without a named, documented source, we label it as an illustrative pattern — not as something that happened.

Advertising and affiliate policy

Gemba Works Lab is supported by advertising. Some pages may in future contain affiliate links; any such link will be clearly disclosed on the page where it appears, in line with the FTC Endorsement Guides. Compensation never determines rankings, recommendations or editorial conclusions.

Corrections

If you find an error, please tell us via the contact page. We review reported errors, and corrections are noted in the article itself rather than silently rewritten.

Revision history

Date	Documents affected	Change
2026-08-02	D-SKT-05–07, D-SKT-00	Skills Transfer section expanded to 7 documents: macro retirement-wave data (5-to-2 replacement ratio, Manufacturing Institute aging-workforce figures), a compressed 30-day/4-week knowledge transfer playbook for short-notice departures, and a department-by-department no-software rollout guide for the skills matrix. All statistics verified against primary sources by direct fetch before publication.
2026-07-18	D-KAI-05–08, D-KAI-P01, D-KAI-00	Kaizen section expanded to 9 documents with four intent guides (failed-rollout restart, 20-person costs, job-shop translation, events vs teian); pillar comparison tables upgraded to the rich-compare format with a sourced-symbol legend.
2026-07-18	All (D-KAI-00–04, D-SKT-00–04, D-OPS-01–03)	Site redesigned to the GWL editorial standard; document numbering introduced; references consolidated into footnote lists.
2026-07-18	All	First publication of the archive (8 articles, 2 sections).