2007 | Page 11 of 17 | Gemba Academy

100% Dissatisfaction is Our Goal

By Jon Miller - May 4th, 2007

A May 4, 2007 USA Today article titled Toyota’s success pleases proponents of ‘lean’ looks at the story of Toyota surpassing GM by volume of cars sold and from the angle that the Lean consulting industry benefits. The

Standards, Abnormality and the Ideal

By Jon Miller - May 3rd, 2007

The topic of warusa kagen led to some interesting further thought. The following statements are all true: 1. When work is performed in the absence of a standard, this is an abnormality 2. When standards exist but are not being followed

Hangin’ with Taiichi

By Ron Pereira - May 3rd, 2007

Let me set the scene of this momentous moment.My wife had already left for her Bible study. I had two kids in the tub (2 year old and 8 month) and my 4 year old was doing something bad… I am sure of it but can’t prove it si

Wanna Be Lean? Buy Some Carousels.

By Ron Pereira - May 3rd, 2007

I recently came across an article that irritated me. The gist of its message is that once all the “easy stuff” with Lean is taken care of… you know like respecting people, improving quality, and pulling material through t

Warusa Kagen is a Revolution of Awareness

By Jon Miller - May 2nd, 2007

There is a Japanese term that I like but is sadly not used as often as others in the Lean community, and may be indicative of a lack of focus in this key area of awareness. It is warusa kagen (悪さかげん) and means “conditio

Repent, I mean Hansei!

By Ron Pereira - May 2nd, 2007

I never seem to stop learning from my friend Jon Miller. I wanted to write a post about hansei and thus decided to dig around to see what other bloggers had to say on the topic. I typed hansei into Google and mid way through the firs

100th Post!

By Ron Pereira - May 1st, 2007

Tonight was my 100th post since starting LSS Academy in January of this year. So as I sip on some cheap Sutter Home White Zinfandel wine (California 2003) and reflect on the past few months I would just like to say thanks to all of you

Dumbing Down Six Sigma

By Ron Pereira - April 30th, 2007

I recently came across an interesting article written by Mark Kiemele, co-founder and president of Air Academy Associates. In the article Mr. Kiemele discusses how Six Sigma could die a slow death or remain around for many years to com

We Are Now Shipping Taiichi Ohno’s Workplace Management

By Jon Miller - April 30th, 2007

Sweet relief, the books have arrived. Thanks for your patience. We’ve set up a flow line to pack and ship, paced at about 90 seconds per order. Now don’t everybody order at once. We value heijunka around here.

Seek the Simple Solution from Many People

By Jon Miller - April 29th, 2007

There is an apparent conflict between two of the ten commandments of improvement that has been bothering me for a while. It is the kind of problem that goes away as soon as you stop thinking about it. But I think it may represent somet

The Exceptional Presenter

By Ron Pereira - April 29th, 2007

Hello from 28,000 feet up in the air. I am flying back home after an awesome week of training a room full of Six Sigma students. I got to the airport a little early and ended up staring down a book shelf in one of the excessively expen

Bad Management

By Ron Pereira - April 27th, 2007

After submitting my post last night I wondered if my overly optimistic attitude was unrealistic. Only one person has commented on the post and this person seemed to think I was off my rocker a bit. I also got to thinking of the recent

How to Use a Kaizen Newspaper

By Jon Miller - April 26th, 2007

Chris asked: Are there rules for what goes on a kaizen newspaper so it does not become a massive action item list? A “massive action item list” should be cause for celebration. A full kaizen newspaper is a good thing. The f

Complainers Wear Me Out

By Ron Pereira - April 26th, 2007

One of my biggest pet peeves is when people constantly complain about how management or some authoritative body (i.e. government official, church leader, etc.) is doing them wrong. These people, you likely know a few, usually complain

Lean Sourcing: The Top Three

By Jon Miller - April 25th, 2007

We’re writing today as part of a score of bloggers on the topic of The Top Three issues in sourcing. Here’s is our Top Three: 3. Slow is the New Fast When faced with the hard way and the easy way, always take the hard way. This is

Graphs 101 – By Seth Godin

By Ron Pereira - April 25th, 2007

My good friend Seth Godin, OK so he doesn’t know I exist but I digress, recently took note of his Google History data. He said the data shows he does a lot more searching on Tuesday. He went on to say that this was completely coi

Narrowing the list with n/3

By Ron Pereira - April 25th, 2007

Rob over at 63 Buckets recently had an excellent post where he discussed the nominal group technique. This brought to mind a neat trick that can be used to help a team take a large list of ideas and scope them down into a more manageab

Neural Linguistic Programming

By Ron Pereira - April 24th, 2007

An interesting field of study I have briefly researched (i.e. read a few books but no formal training) is Neural Linguistics Programming (NLP). I am by no means an expert in NLP and am not promoting it here. There are parts of NLP th

Theme Blogging Week: Lean Sourcing

By Jon Miller - April 24th, 2007

The Sourcing Innovation blog has organized a group of fellow bloggers in a series of posts on the topic of sourcing over the next week. Each of our 20 or so blogs will raise their Top Three issues in sourcing. What can a kaizen blog of

Lean Landscaping

By Ron Pereira - April 23rd, 2007

Some people say mixing Lean and Six Sigma with your home life is wrong. I couldn’t disagree more. I mean come on… are we supposed to just stop trying to make things better after leaving the plant? That makes no sense to me a

A Midsummer Night’s Dream

By Ron Pereira - April 22nd, 2007

My wife and I have been blessed with 3 kid’s ages 4, 2, and 8 months. One of things we have always done is read to them – a lot. We read to them before bed and many times before naps. Today, before naps my 4 year old asked me

Binary Logistic Regression

By Ron Pereira - April 21st, 2007

Yikes… this title sounds serious, eh? No worries… we can get though it. We use linear regression when we have variable Y data (output) and variable X data (input) and we want to know if there is correlation between them. We

Ten Reasons Why One Piece Flow Will Not Work

By Jon Miller - April 21st, 2007

Rather than insisting that one piece flow will work, we like to ask people why one piece flow will not work for them. Here are some of the most common reasons we hear, and some ways we respond: 1. We can’t get needed materials in

TOC Bottleneck versus Lean Pacemaker – Part 2

By Ron Pereira - April 19th, 2007

Last night we discussed the main tenets of TOC. Tonight we will introduce the Lean Pacemaker showing how it may not always be the constraint in our system. This, my friends, is where the TOC and Lean proponents often “bow up̶

What Would You Do If You Had No __?

By Jon Miller - April 19th, 2007

One my favorite phrases used by my Japanese teachers’ was “__ ga nakattara dosuru?” or “What would you do if you had no__?” When I heard this I knew we were in for some fun – of watching someone stretch their mind. R

Year: 2007