May 2006 | Gemba Academy

Kaizen the Design, Recall the Part

By Jon Miller - May 31st, 2006

A Washington Street Journal article on May 31, 2006 reports that once again, Toyota Recalls Some Prius Cars. That’s some 170,000 Prius vehicles. If you include the other models it’s nearly a million cars recalled for parts

Gemba Keiei Chapter 23: Producing at the Lowest Possible Cost

By Jon Miller - May 30th, 2006

Taiichi Ohno starts the chapter by telling the story of when the President of Toyota, Mr. Ishida, was summoned to the National Diet and scolded by politicians for building passenger cars that were too expensive. Back then even the head

Before Kaizen, Ask “If You Had Enough, Would You Know?”

By Jon Miller - May 29th, 2006

I visited the 35th annual Seattle Folklife Festival yesterday, enjoying a couple of hours with my family before diving into a very busy couple of weeks. There was great music, passable weather and more hippies than you can shake a stic

Construction Executives Visit Toyota, Learn Kaizen

By Jon Miller - May 25th, 2006

From time to time we post articles about our Lean manufacturing benchmarking trips and travelogues of doing kaizen in interesting places around the world. Today I want to point you to the Reforming Project Management blog and an articl

The Lean Office & The Typewriter of the Future

By Jon Miller - May 24th, 2006

I took typing classes before it was called “keyboarding”. The first manual typewriter I used was a fascinating and alien collection of metal eyes and teeth, a beautiful piece of industrial design like this one. The march of progres

Gemba Keiei Chapter 22: Shut the Machines Off!

By Jon Miller - May 23rd, 2006

Taiichi Ohno starts by explaining the difference between an automatic loom “working” and “moving” or “running”. Working implies that jidoka prevents it from making defects. A machine “running” and producing defects is n

Hoshin Kanri Lesson: No Plan Goes According to Plan

By Jon Miller - May 19th, 2006

Having completed the second day of the Hoshin Kanri (Policy Management) session with LEI, I can say that I learned that no plan goes according to plan. Our instructor Pascal Dennis used this phrase several times over two days to drive

Going Back to School for Hoshin Kanri

By Jon Miller - May 18th, 2006

I’ve taught Hoshin Kanri half a dozen times to clients but I struggle to put it into practice at Gemba. You won’t be interested in hearing my excuses, and it’s my fault that we’ve had Hoshin Kanri annual plans i

Lean Manufacturing in the Construction Industry

By Jon Miller - May 17th, 2006

Eric Sander Senior Operations Consultant I have recently had the pleasure of working with a young business owner who has discovered the potential of Lean Principles in an industry very much in need of improvement, the building trades.

Good News! Hospitals are Healing Themselves through Kaizen

By Jon Miller - May 16th, 2006

“All the things wrong with hospitals can be fixed.” Narrator Lloyd Dobyns tells us at the beginning of the video program Good News…How Hospitals Heal Themselves In the video program hospital administrators and clinicians tell

Month: May 2006