January 2009 | Gemba Academy

The Correct Sequence for Doing 5S?

By Jon Miller - January 29th, 2009

Harish was reading the archives and asked a question: Traditionally (Hirano or Ohno’s Work Place Management) 5S is in a specific order – Sort, Set (Straighten), Shine (Spic & Span), Standardize and Sustain (if needed).

10 Ways the USPS Can Become a True Economic Engine

By Jon Miller - January 28th, 2009

Today my good friend Bill who does lean training with the United States Postal Service sent me an article from CNN Money today titled USPS may cut day of mail delivery. Bill wondered if the proposal to cut Saturday delivery was “

Finding Time Values for Standard Work

By Jon Miller - January 27th, 2009

Thanks to Gary Tucker for a question regarding standard work and standardized time values: How do you get your time values and how do you know that they are standardized? You sure can’t just take any observed time. There are all

A Look Back… 400 Posts and Counting!

By Ron Pereira - January 27th, 2009

I remember the night well… I was sitting on my couch half watching TV while surfing the Internet. I had just visited one of the only blogs I consistently read back in those days – Gemba Panta Rei – which as many of you know is wr

The Best Investment Advice

By Ron Pereira - January 26th, 2009

Note: This is the 400th article here on LSS Academy! I’ll take some time to reflect on this in the near future. But for now, I have a far more important topic to discuss. Read on. Times are tough. Real tough. You may have recently lo

How to Stretch 90 Second of Work to 2,700 Seconds

By Jon Miller - January 26th, 2009

Sometimes it seems like the most difficult part of helping some companies implement lean is sorting out the various legal and purchasing details to finally get a signed contract. While the whole process can seem bureaucratic and non va

The Secret to Success – Practice

By Ron Pereira - January 25th, 2009

What do Tiger Woods and Taiichi Ohno, one of the chief architects of the Toyota Production System, have in common? Well – besides making history in their particular fields of excellence – both of these men believe/believed

5 Why? vs. Why Not?

By Jon Miller - January 24th, 2009

The Toyota Why Not website came my way via Twitter. It’s an interesting distraction. The best part is the birds chirping. I actually looked for an open window until I realized that birds don’t chirp in January in Seattle. T

Lesson for Toyota from the Classics: the Cost of Victory

By Jon Miller - January 22nd, 2009

It’s a shame that future leaders of major corporations such as Toyota and GM no longer receive education in the Classics. If they had, maybe the senior executives at Toyota would have remembered the story of King Pyrrhus of Epiru

Ask Gemba: World Class Direct to Indirect Labor Ratio?

By Jon Miller - January 21st, 2009

B. Huey asked on January 20 in a comment to this article on TPM metrics & financial impact: What is considered a world class ratio for direct labor to indirect & salary? In other words total indirect & salary divided by

Month: January 2009