February 2007 | Gemba Academy

Top 5 Things I’ve Never Heard from a Kaizen Team Member

By Jon Miller - February 28th, 2007

#5. “I’m surprised at how little we got done in four and a half days.” #4. “I have no concerns about these results being sustained.” #3. “Everything went as planned.” #2. “There’s n

Construction Industry Uses LSS

By Ron - February 28th, 2007

I came across this article and while it doesn’t go into great detail it talks about how LSS was taught to home builders during the final days of a workshop. It is always encouraging to me when I see and hear of other industries u

How Much Should We Pay for Kaizen Ideas?

By Jon Miller - February 27th, 2007

“How much should we pay for kaizen ideas?” This is a question we often hear during a kaizen class. The type of kaizen we are talking about here is the everyone-everyday kind, otherwise known as the soikufu system in Japanes

Hypothesis Testing

By Ron - February 27th, 2007

One of my favorite statistical tools is hypothesis testing. We can use hypothesis testing for many purposes. For example, we would use the popular 2-sample t-test when we have two samples of variable data and want to understand if they

Scott County Schools Trying Out the Toyota Way

By Jon Miller - February 26th, 2007

Today’s article in the Lexington Herald-Leader made my day a little bit better. The Scott County Way: Educators take a page from ‘The Toyota Way’ to boost curriculums: It seemed only natural that Toyota’s corpor

Lean Six Sigma Hot Sports Opinions

By Ron - February 26th, 2007

It seems “Lean Six Sigma” has been on the minds of some bloggers lately. There was a great discussion over at the Gemba Research blog here. I saw Rob commented on the topic here. Last, but certainly not least, the folks at the Scra

Genchi Gembutsu at the Starbucks Coffee Company

By Jon Miller - February 24th, 2007

Toyota is not the only global brand having growing pains from its success these days. In today’s Wall Street Journal article titled Starbucks Chairman Says Trouble May Be Brewing, Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz has sent out a

Talking with Toyota’s Chief

By Ron - February 24th, 2007

Business Week recently interviewed Toyota’s chief, Katsuaki Watanabe. They discussed hot topics such as how Toyota is battling the “big company” disease, quality issues, and the potential backlash in America as they close in on G

Once a Month Cooking – Lean or Not?

By Ron - February 23rd, 2007

A few posts ago I went on about my Sensei wife. I told you how she was teaching my kids about lean concepts, etc. Well, I must be fair and balanced with my blogging and need to confess something to you all. Tonight, my beautiful wife i

The Seven Habits of Toyota People

By Jon Miller - February 22nd, 2007

The harder Toyota’s overwhelming success becomes to ignore, the more books and articles are written about what makes them great. Many say the same thing, but in different ways. I’ve just started flipping through a Japanese

Month: February 2007