January 2008 | Gemba Academy

The Secret Lives of Toyota Term Employees, Episode 6

By Jon Miller - January 31st, 2008

Tomorrow is Creative Idea Suggestion Submission Day What happens after a term employee at Toyota becomes a regular employee? Is this the happy ending when the assembly line workers finally feel the warm embrace of President Watanabe? D

JIT and Jidoka are Useless…

By Ron Pereira - January 30th, 2008

Yes, the two pillars of the Toyota Production System – JIT and Jidoka – are absolutely worthless… if you don’t respect people. You see, in my opinion, anyone who tries hard enough and gets support from more ex

Breaking Down Barriers to Continuous Flow

By Jon Miller - January 28th, 2008

One way to look at lean is that it’s all about enabling the continuous flow of actions, information, materials, services and cash in such a way that these things generate of goodness, however you may define that. The theory is th

Rope Suppliers

By Ron Pereira - January 28th, 2008

J Thatcher recently asked: Here’s a question: If the student becomes the initiation point for “pull” learning, how does the instructor continue to “push” students beyond what they believed themselves capable? (And yes, I’m

Inspired at NASA

By Ron Pereira - January 27th, 2008

This past weekend my family and I went to Houston to visit some relatives. On Saturday we went to NASA. If you have never been there you need to carve out some time to make this visit. I took quite a few pictures and will try to

Sustainability, the New Buzzword. But Is It Sustainable?

By Jon Miller - January 26th, 2008

Thanks to polar ice melts, $100 per barrel oil prices, and an inevitable generational shift to people who have grown up hearing about environmental destruction arriving in positions to influence opinion, consumption and policy, sustain

101 Kaizen Templates: ECRS Worksheet

By Jon Miller - January 25th, 2008

We often talk about lean management being the elimination of all waste and non-value added. We may call it the pursuit of perfection, of a waste-free process. But what if we can’t eliminate a certain waste from a process? What to

Should we Push or Pull in Schools?

By Ron Pereira - January 24th, 2008

My good friend, and excellent blogger, Mark Graban posted an interesting article related to how a school is using continuous improvement methods to, well, improve things. For those who don’t know, Mark and I live in the same town an

What Can We Learn from Boeing's Lean Supply Chain Stumbles?

By Jon Miller - January 23rd, 2008

Not much more than a decade ago, Boeing went through a hiring binge to ramp up production, fell flat on deliveries and shed many jobs as a result. Gemba’s office is quite near Boeing’s Everett, Washington factory and the fu

Excellence is a Habit

By Ron Pereira - January 23rd, 2008

“We are what we repeatedly do. Excellence, then, is not an act, but habit.” -Aristotle I am doing my best to teach my kiddos about lean and six sigma. Since they are ages 5, 3, and 1 my instructional tactics need to be crea

Month: January 2008