2007 | Page 10 of 45 | Gemba Academy

Top 10 Books on Lean Thinking

By Jon Miller - August 30th, 2007

Here is a highly subjective list of the top 10 books on Lean thinking. Toyota Talent: Developing Your People the Toyota Way by Jeffrey Liker and David Meier This book has the benefit of being new, and providing very practical and relev

Fun with Confidence Intervals – Part 2

By Ron Pereira - August 30th, 2007

Last night we began our discussion on confidence intervals. Specifically, we talked about the difference between population and sample parameters and how they play a major role in understanding what a confidence interval is. Tonight I

The Toyota Production System is Practice, Not Theory

By Jon Miller - August 29th, 2007

Pete Abilla from the Shmula blog, recently commented on one of our blog articles Is the Theory of Constraints (TOC) a Theory? He said: During my short time at Toyota, I learned this lesson well: we were always encouraged to “try

Fun with Confidence Intervals – Part 1

By Ron Pereira - August 29th, 2007

If I said the words “confidence intervals” would you know what I meant? What if I also asked if you could calculate them? If you answered no to either one of these questions I assure you will be able to answer yes by end of this tw

5 Decision Making Styles

By Ron Pereira - August 28th, 2007

Let’s suppose you are a parent and decide to ask your kids to help you make an important family decision. After careful consideration your kids share their thoughts with you only to learn the decision had already been made and

Why You Need A Tatakidai

By Jon Miller - August 28th, 2007

When people say to me “We don’t need no more stinkin’ Japanese words in our Lean vocabulary,” I don’t argue. Most of us aren’t using all of the ones we’ve got anyway. Why acquire knowledge you

Increasing Return on Net Assets (RONA) with Lean & Six Sigma

By Ron Pereira - August 27th, 2007

The business metric RONA (Return on Net Assets) is used by many companies in order to gauge how well they turn their assets into income. I am no accountant but do know there are a few ways to calculate RONA. For the sake of this arti

The Secret Lives of Toyota Term Employees, Episode 1

By Jon Miller - August 26th, 2007

Kaizen and respect for people. These are the words under which Toyota presents itself as a company that builds cars by building people. Yet this is the ideal, and we know that there is always a gap between reality and the ideal. What i

Lean Sushi

By Ron Pereira - August 26th, 2007

I came across a fun story of how a sushi shop uses lean principles to its advantage. Kura Zushi, operated by Kura Corp., is the third-largest player in the industry. What sets it apart is its just-in-time production system, similar to

Target, Actual, Please Explain

By Jon Miller - August 24th, 2007

I learned some important lessons today. One which I will share is to never compromise when it comes to placing visual status boards on the shop floor. Visual status boards promote problem solving and kaizen by exposing problems. There

Year: 2007