February 2009 | Gemba Academy

10,000 Hours of Practice

By Ron Pereira - February 26th, 2009

10,000 hours. That’s precisely how long you need to practice something before you can even think about calling yourself an expert. Well, at least this is what Malcolm Gladwell claims in his newest book Outliers, which I must say is o

Taiichi Ohno’s Three Lessons for the New Toyota President

By Jon Miller - February 26th, 2009

Yesterday Kevin Meyer provided a useful summary of how Toyota is getting back to basics, as described in the Wall Street Journal article titled “A Scion Drives Toyota Back to Basics”. Here are the key takeaways from both so

You’re Late. What Do you Say?

By Ron Pereira - February 24th, 2009

It’s 7:58 AM and beads of sweat are forming on your forehead. Your pulse rate is increasing as you grip your steering wheel tightly. And to make matters worse… you forgot your mobile phone at home. In 2 minutes you will officially

Drive and Dedication Power the TBP Process

By Jon Miller - February 23rd, 2009

As a companion to the problem solving funnel or the 8 step approach of the problem solving process at Toyota, there is a set of principles that guide thought and action. Together these make up the newly described way of working called

The Complete Meaning of Shitsuke

By Ron Pereira - February 22nd, 2009

There are some Westerners (Americans, Europeans, etc.) who get all bothered when lean folks use too many Japanese terms. So these people go on about how it’s “Policy Deployment” and not “Hoshin Kanri” or it’s “Continuous

TBP: Toyota Business Practice

By Jon Miller - February 22nd, 2009

Are you interested in practical problem-solving and continuous improvement methodologies? In this blog post, we explore the Toyota Business Practice (TBP) and its relationship with PDCA and A3 thinking. We also take a closer look at th

Edwards Deming, Supply Chain Visionary?

By Jon Miller - February 20th, 2009

This is my contribution to the Supply Chain Anti-trends Cross Blogging series organized by Michael Lamoureux of Sourcing Innovation. The Strategic Sourcerer contributed with a farewell to golden parachuted fat cat CEOs and two other ar

A Question About Kaizen

By Jon Miller - February 18th, 2009

Here is a question for you about kaizen: You have two continuous improvement systems; one which invests in 10 brilliant people each solving one $250,000 problem per year or another system which invests in 1,000 average people solving o

Free Introduction to Lean Video

By Ron Pereira - February 18th, 2009

Here is part one of our first Gemba Academy video. To see the complete and full screen version – in high definition – please visit our main site. Stay tuned for more free videos in the coming weeks.

Guest Post: Daily Lean Marketing Speech