December 2005 | Gemba Academy

Crossing the Chasm of Lean Transformation, Part 2

By Jon Miller - December 31st, 2005

Should the “wrong” approached be replaced by a path more closely following the one Toyota has taken? The “Training Within Industry” modeled approach to developing people and Toyota’s hyper cost-focused man

Crossing the Chasm of Lean Transformation, Part 1

By Jon Miller - December 30th, 2005

A friend of mine who is a VP of Operations at a Midwestern hospital asked me two questions a few days ago. The first was “What is the percentage of Lean implementations that fail?” This is a loaded question, and not one for

How to Kaizen Boxing Day

By Jon Miller - December 26th, 2005

One of the greatest evils that kaizen and Lean manufacturing attempts to eliminate is overproduction, one of the 7 wastes. Overproduction hides true capacity, exacerbates quality problems, builds inventory, and generally amplifies the

Are they Nuts? Lean Team Shouts “Do It First and Think Later”

By Jon Miller - December 23rd, 2005

Edson Oda Senior Operations Consultant It was funny to see some puzzled faces and hear some comments and jokes from those who had seen the NEC Lean manufacturing slogan or heard the Lean team shout loudly ‘Faço, Faço, Faço Já

Lean Engineering and Taking Down the Walls

By Jon Miller - December 22nd, 2005

Earlier this week I visited a customer who is just starting out with their Lean transformation. They are an engineering firm. They have toured another one of our clients who has succeeded in implementing Lean in their transactional are

Faça Primeiro e Pense Depois: What I Learned from Japan in Brazil

By Jon Miller - December 20th, 2005

Edson Oda Senior Operations Consultant On the Evolving Excellence blog today Bill Waddell admits he doesn’t speak Japanese, warns against drowning your Lean efforts with Japanese lessons, and takes on the Japanese for not being curio

I’ll Have Some Innovation Please, but Hold the Kaizen

By Jon Miller - December 19th, 2005

Predictability can be a good thing or a bad thing. A friend of mine named John Cass is a guru in the areas of PR and corporate blogging. John pushed my buttons by pointing me at an article by Knowledge@Wharton from the Wharton School o

Dueling Views on Role of Kaizen Events for Lean Transformation

By Jon Miller - December 18th, 2005

Dueling views on the role of kaizen events in a Lean transformation were expressed in the latest SME Lean newsletter. George Koenigsaecker makes an attempt at answering the question Why aren’t there more lean successes? I just fi

The Cheerful Delusion of the Kaizen Mind

By Jon Miller - December 16th, 2005

The December 16, 2005 USA Today article titled Optimism Puts Rose-colored Tint in Glasses of Top Execs is an interesting study on strength and weakness of top executives, particularly their sometimes delusional optimism. The main point

A3 Report Title: 189 Apologies

By Jon Miller - December 14th, 2005

We don’t manufacture automobiles, but I know a bit about how it must feel when automobile companies issue a recall and have to ask many thousands of customers to bring in their vehicles to fix a flaw they have discovered. We found ou

Month: December 2005