July 2007 | Gemba Academy

New & Improved Free Skill Matrix Template (v. 7.31.07)

By Jon Miller - July 31st, 2007

New and improved free skill matrix template: these are beautiful words to the ears of a Lean thinker. Thanks to the Excel skills of our Lean office guru Marcie MacRae, we have “the kaizen of the month for July 2007” at Gemb

Is IT the Key to Improving Healthcare Quality and Efficiency?

By Jon Miller - July 30th, 2007

Is IT the key to improving healthcare quality and efficiency? The majority of healthcare opinion leaders seem to think so. The findings from the Commonwealth Fund/Modern Healthcare Opinion Leaders Survey appeared in the July 30 edition

Facing the Giants

By Ron Pereira - July 30th, 2007

I recently watched the movie Facing the Giants and it made me rethink some things related to lean and six sigma. For those not familiar with the movie, Facing the Giants is a Christian based movie about an American football coach who g

Why Is Your Lean Effort Failing?

By Jon Miller - July 29th, 2007

The Lean Blog is always a good place for insights and discussion on why Lean efforts struggle or fail. Previous discussions have delved into Lean efforts that are in fact LAME. Mark Graban wrote about the survey format of the Lean Inst

The Importance of “So What?” in A3 Kaizen

By Jon Miller - July 28th, 2007

One of the things that makes Toyota-style problem solving so effective is the insistence on true root cause analysis and countermeasures. In simple terms this is known as “asking why 5 times” or “5 why”. Instead

5 Why’s Survey

By Ron Pereira - July 28th, 2007

My fellow Keller, Texas lean blogging pal Mark, of Lean Blog fame, is running a survey. Following up on the LEI survey that was released and discussed here, I’ve been talking with a few folks offline about what the “root ca

A Closed Mitt and an Open Mind

By Jon Miller - July 26th, 2007

Sorting through old documents as part of my regular 5S at the office I came across another consulting firm’s Lean training materials, collected about a decade ago. These explained Lean manufacturing and the idea of eliminating wa

Kaizen Rules – 9 & 10

By Ron Pereira - July 26th, 2007

This week has been about all things kaizen. I have to come clean and admit I wrote this entire series last weekend as I was preparing to take off on vacation with my family. Thanks to the greatness of WordPress I was able to delay the

Free Skill Matrix Template

By Jon Miller - July 25th, 2007

Here is a free skill matrix template in Microsoft Excel format. We receive many requests on this blog and to Gemba Research about the skill matrix template. The skill matrix is a very broadly useful visual management tool for people de

Kaizen Rules – 7 & 8

By Ron Pereira - July 25th, 2007

Want to win $50? Read this entire article to find out how. We have officially rounded the corner on our kaizen rules series. If you are just joining us you can catch up by checking these posts out: Rules 1 & 2 Rules 3 & 4 Rules

Month: July 2007