December 2006 | Gemba Academy

Top Five Non-Lean Things Gemba Did In 2006

By Jon Miller - December 29th, 2006

Inspired by the “tag” idea from Mark Graban over at the Lean Blog, from our hansei list here are the top five non-Lean things Gemba did in 2006: 1. Trying to do too many things. How hard is it to walk the talk? Take Hoshin

Selecting a Management and Improvement System

By Jon Miller - December 28th, 2006

Lean manufacturing is a system for managing and improving production operations. More broadly, Lean manufacturing principles can be applied to manage and improve any type of operation from healthcare to service and distribution, as we

Being an Improvement Agnostic

By Jon Miller - December 27th, 2006

A while ago my colleague and I were doing our best imitations of slick salesmen in front of a group of leaders from a small, local manufacturing firm. We were fired up after a tour of their factory, confident that space could be cut to

Holiday Shopping is Wasteful

By Jon Miller - December 26th, 2006

It’s time for my second annual Boxing Day railing against the waste caused by holiday spending at the year end. This year we find a December 23, 2006 Wall Street Journal article titled How Christmas Brings Out the Grinch in Econo

Note to Toyota: Top Five Things to Do in 2007 as World’s #1 Automobile Manufacturer

By Jon Miller - December 23rd, 2006

According to a Wall Street Journal article today Toyota Is Poised to Surpass GM As the Top Car Maker Next Year. That would be 9.04 million vehicles, just ahead of General Motors. Congratulations are premature, but it’s not too ea

Ford CEO Mullaly’s First Impressions

By Jon Miller - December 22nd, 2006

In the December 22, 2006 Wall Street Journal article titled Mulally’s ‘First Impressions’ published the letter from the former Lean leader of Boeing and now CEO of the Ford Motor to the employees of the company. He st

Gemba Keiei by Taiichi Ohno, Chapter 37: The Standard Time Should be the Shortest Time

By Jon Miller - December 21st, 2006

“Speaking of standards, time study is another thing everyone gets wrong.” The typical time study is based on taking 10 times and setting an average time as the standard. Ohno says this is very bad because if you are watchin

When is Point Kaizen OK?

By Jon Miller - December 19th, 2006

Point kaizen refers to small, isolated improvements that are easy to implement quickly. The impact of point kaizens are typically small but they can have a large impact. Point kaizen are in contrast to line kaizen, plane kaizen, cube k

The Starfish, the Spider and the Span of Five

By Jon Miller - December 17th, 2006

I just finished reading The Starfish and the Spider: The Unstoppable Power of Leaderless Organizations by Ori Brafman nd Rod A. Beckstrom. It is a quick read with some interesting ideas. I have a number of issues with the book, and by

Gemba Keiei by Taiichi Ohno, Chapter 36: Only the Gemba Can Do Cost Reduction

By Jon Miller - December 15th, 2006

Taiichi Ohno begins the chapter by demonstrating the Toyota philosophy of “aim for 10X improvement, not 10% improvement”. He instructed Human Resources to give the shop floor 10 people even though they had asked for 100 peo

Month: December 2006