Albert's Gemba walk

For many years, I stayed in China for working and ignored the political news in Hong Kong. At recent moment, I left the current job and stayed Hong Kong, so I heard many news and started to care about my home town. I knew it is not good for me as a Hong Kong people, anyway, I am going to fix my mistake from now on.

Here is two video clips about Councillor Albert Chan (陳偉業) presented in legislative council, to resolve the Public Revenue Protection Order 2009, published in the Gazette as Legal Notice No. 27 of 2009 and laid on the table of the Legislative Council on 4 March 2009. In simply said, Hon Albert Chan proposed to cancel the increasing of tobacco tax. They were a excellent presentation for Albert's ideas, and he made me to think in different point of view for a matter.

My blog is always talking about the lean manufacturing concept. This time, I used the Albert's presentation to show my idea for lean as well. I am not going to agree or disagree with Albert's proposal, but it made me interesting on "vulgarity" news for the councillors. The clips were found in youtube.com and they made me understand why they did that in council. The first thing I most disappointed that the public media were all focusing on the vulgarity they said in council meeting, but why they did that? It was obviously that the media was going to mislead the story. Whatever, it is a political game and I am not going to present my point of view here.

The most interesting fact is Albert gave us many points which are based on the Hong Kong people's livelihood. He gave the analysis of the economic problem of the cigarette seller on the streets with real data supporting. I believed that Albert has visited the seller and got the real information on the street, he found that it has a deep impact of the income for the newpaper seller on the street. What is the meaning of Gemba walk? It is not only used in factory, the councillors supposed to has the gemba walk on the street to understand what is happening on there.

This is a fatal absurdity to elminate the red wine tax and double the tobacco tax. Is that the people drinking the red wine really live longer than the others? In the situation of economic down, the most important thing is to solve the problem on livelihood, it is nonsense to double the tax of tobacco and think it can solve the problem of smoking for thousands years. At recent moment, many and many problem on the medicines and its dealer, it was the problem of monitoring fron the government. A moment before, one hospital let a diver to die in front of her gate. What did the Secretary for Food and Health do? The best policy or solution never came from the nice and beautiful office, it must come from the Gemba!

I just hope the secretaries of department walk out from their office and see what is happening in Hong Kong, and learn some lean concept if possible.