November 2005 | Gemba Academy

Run Faster, Team

By Jon Miller - November 28th, 2005

There’s a great day-after-Thanksgiving Day piece on Joe Ely’s Learning About Lean blog. I missed the sports action over the weekend but Joe caught an American football coach’s half-time strategy for doing better in th

Gemba Keiei Chapter 12: Agricultural People Like Inventory

By Jon Miller - November 25th, 2005

Taiichi Ohno makes an interesting connection between the Japanese as historically an agricultural people and the fact that Japanese manufacturers seem to like inventory. Farmers growing rice are at the mercy of the weather. There are d

Triangulating the Problem of American Manufacturing, Part 2

By Jon Miller - November 24th, 2005

Why do organizations fail to invest sufficiently in their people? The term Human Capital was introduced over 40 year ago by University of Chicago Professor Gary Becker. Human capital are the assets a person owns in for form of job skil

Triangulating the Problem of American Manufacturing, Part 1

By Jon Miller - November 23rd, 2005

Triangulation is a process by which you figure out where you are by checking three points or positions. Triangulation can be used to study a phenomenon by comparing three (or more) types of points of view or data sources. Three things

The Perils of Not Going “Genchi, Gembutsu” (On Site, With the Actual Things)

By Jon Miller - November 21st, 2005

I take a lot of people from many companies to Japan to see lean organizations, such as the Toyota Motor Corporation. One of the themes you see and hear in Toyota is the idea of Genchi (actual place) and Gembutsu (actual things). Toyota

Time for an Ohno Prize?

By Jon Miller - November 18th, 2005

Bill Waddell asks readers to help him out in answering the question “Why should anyone apply for the Shingo Prize?” in a recent blog entry. Bill points out that now bankrupt Delphi spent around $300,000 to win Shingo Prizes

Setting the Bridges to Nowhere to the Torch

By Jon Miller - November 17th, 2005

It’s been a good week for Lean government. First Senator Joseph Lieberman says he will bring a “little of your Kaizen attitude back to the United States Senate” while visiting a factory doing Lean manufacturing in Con

Eric’s Japan Lean Benchmarking Trip, 3

By Jon Miller - November 16th, 2005

This is the third and final installation of Eric’s report from his Lean manufacturing benchmarking trip to Japan in October. “Omron Taiyo manufactures electronic parts and employs the handicapped. Omron Taiyo produces vario

Peter Pan, Kaizen and Joseph Lieberman

By Jon Miller - November 15th, 2005

An article in today’s New Britain Herald brightened what was otherwise a rainy, jet-lagged winter day here in the Puget Sound. Connecticut is a hotbed of Lean manufacturing and kaizen activity. Many clients of the Shingijutsu con

Gemba Keiei Chapter 11: Wasted Motion is Not Work

By Jon Miller - November 14th, 2005

In this chapter Taiichi Ohno talks about the importance of training your eyes to see the difference between wasted motion and value added work. Another theme is the way the words you use affect how you think and behave. An English exam

Month: November 2005