2007 | Page 8 of 17 | Gemba Academy

Lean Accounting Webcast Archive

By Ron Pereira - June 25th, 2007

If you missed the Lean Accounting webcast last week here is a link to the archive. What you need to know about lean accounting (Hint: It’s not just for accountants). This archive will be available for one year from this link.

10 Common Misconceptions About Lean Manufacturing

By Jon Miller - June 24th, 2007

1. Lean production = volume production. In Taiichi Ohno’s Workplace Management he suggested that the Toyota system was ideally suited for low volume production, and not as well suited for the higher volume production that Toyota

How to preach the gospel

By Ron Pereira - June 24th, 2007

One of my passions in life is studying and learning more about my Catholic faith. I especially enjoy reading the early church fathers. And of these earliest Christians, St. Francis of Assisi may be my favorite. St. Francis, when in

How to apply the one sample t-test

By Ron Pereira - June 21st, 2007

Last night we discussed the history and background of the one sample t-test. As promised, tonight we will discuss how it is you actually use the slick little hypothesis test. At the end of this post is a free case study available f

How Many Ways Can You Do Kaizen at Your Company?

By Jon Miller - June 21st, 2007

The theme of kaizen and the human brain is one of our favorites here at Gemba, and this week’s post by Mike Lopez at the Lean blog takes on the important topics of psychology and Lean. Mike points out that the way in which you do

How beer influenced statistics

By Ron Pereira - June 20th, 2007

Originally published on June 20, 2007 Back in the early 1900s, a certain W.S. Gosset, an Englishman, was tasked with brewing better beer. Really, I’m being serious. Gosset was a bright man with two degrees from Oxford and was

What Does the Observer Have to Do with the Observed?

By Jon Miller - June 20th, 2007

The fact that light is both a wave and a particle at the same time has been puzzling physicists for decades. More recently, managers have been puzzled by the fact that work is both value and waste at the same time. This wonderful video

Stop “Deploying” and Make Something Better

By Ron Pereira - June 20th, 2007

A reader of the Lean Blog left this comment to the excellent post Psychology and Lean. Unsolicited advice…. but maybe instead of pushing lean (and maybe you aren’t)… figure out what the main problems and pain points

The Pugh Matrix

By Ron Pereira - June 19th, 2007

By Rob Thompson The Pugh matrix was invented by Stuart Pugh at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow, Scotland. It was designed as an approach for evaluating multiple options against each other, relative to a baseline option. It goe

Lean Dentist

By Ron Pereira - June 18th, 2007

I believe the guys over at the Lean Blog may have previously discussed this story… but in case you missed it I wanted to share it. There is a dentist that believes in lean thinking and is becoming recognized for it. Here is

We interrupt this Blog

By Ron Pereira - June 18th, 2007

I apologize for the technical difficulties today. My hosting company (name starts with a color and ends with the word host) has failed me the last few weeks. Today the site was down for much of the afternoon. Needless to say I wi

Job Instruction for Lean Transformation Leaders

By Jon Miller - June 18th, 2007

The new book by David Meier and Jeffrey Liker titled Toyota Talent is full of nuggets. Perhaps the best thing I got out of the book is an explicit understanding of the four-step approach to teaching that is Job Instruction. Now I see h

Boring wins Championships

By Ron Pereira - June 17th, 2007

Me and the fam took our annual trip to San Antonio this weekend… my kids love Shamu so we ventured back to Sea World. Like any good blogger, I had my eyes and ears open for some good material to share with you all. I saw this m

Dealing with Non Normal Data

By Ron Pereira - June 15th, 2007

Originally published on June 15, 2007 Robin, over on the iSixSigma blog, had an interesting post regarding hypothesis testing. Specifically, the question posed was how to deal with non-normal data. Typically, most Six Sigma practitione

Half of the intel in Google is wasted

By Jon Miller - June 14th, 2007

You know you’re a jaded TPS sensei too long in the Lean business when you read a headline like the one on 13 June 2007 in CNet News announcing Half the electricity in a PC is wasted: Intel, Google and your first thought is “

7 Tips to Better Brainstorming

By Ron Pereira - June 14th, 2007

Brainstorming is an extremely powerful tool. Most of us have likely been part of a brainstorming session before. Sadly, it’s been my experience that about 9 out of 10 people have no clue how to brainstorm the right way. So

Want to Learn Kaizen? Forget About It

By Jon Miller - June 13th, 2007

Kaizen starts in the brain, so understanding the working of the brain is essential to doing kaizen better. A June 4, 2007 New Scientist article titled Forgetfulness is a tool of the brain suggests that if we want to learn kaizen, we al

Computer Kaizen

By Ron Pereira - June 13th, 2007

I have a question for you. If I asked you to locate a random file I knew you had on your computer how long would it take you to find it? Less than 30 seconds? What about the performance of your computer? Is the Internet moving

Help Decision Making with a Cause & Effect (C&E) Matrix

By Ron Pereira - June 12th, 2007

Last night we discussed how we can use a Cause and Effect (C&E) Matrix to narrow down a long list of inputs into a more manageable one. I also provided a free MS Excel C&E Matrix Template for those interested. Tonight I wan

A Standard Way of Starting Your Day

By Jon Miller - June 11th, 2007

Having a standard way of starting your day has been written about in many personal productivity books, blogs and promoted by self-improvement gurus. Yet why is this so hard? In one word, variation. In some ways it is personal standard

About The Cause & Effect (C&E) Matrix

By Ron Pereira - June 11th, 2007

One of my favorite continuous improvement tools is the cause and effect matrix (C&E Matrix). Sometimes you will hear this tool referred to as a XY Matrix. However, I am not referring to the Ishikawa Diagram (fishbone) even thou

The Top 10 Suggestion System Stumbles and How to Avoid Them

By Jon Miller - June 10th, 2007

Are you looking to implement an organizational suggestion system? Perhaps you already have one in place, but aren’t satisfied with the program? Read on to see our top 10 stumbles to avoid in your own suggestion system programs. T

LSSA Carnival – 2

By Ron Pereira - June 9th, 2007

Here are some of my favorite posts from around the blogosphere this week. John Hunter, in response to one of my more controversial posts, offered an excellent take on how bad management results in layoffs. Over on the iSixSigma blog Mi

Putting the Zen Back in Kaizen

By Jon Miller - June 8th, 2007

The “zen” in the word “kaizen” has nothing to do with Zen Buddhism. This is a mistake we often see in books or presentations. Kaizen means continuous improvement, or literally “to change and make good̶

Kaizen Song: Hey, Juneka

By Jon Miller - June 7th, 2007

Hey, Juneka (heijuneka) (to the music of The Beatles’ “Hey, Jude”) Heijuneka, don’t make a batch Fill one order, then fill another When salesmen place orders in small amounts Then you can start to make the load

Year: 2007