October 2009 | Gemba Academy

Green Manufacturing Tour of Toyota Tsutsumi

By Jon Miller - October 31st, 2009

An article on the CarAdvice.com.au website titled Toyota’s Tsutsumi Plant – tour a green role model highlights some of the advances Toyota has made at the factory which assembles the Prius hybrid car. Some featured environm

Who Sets the Standard?

By Jon Miller - October 29th, 2009

Over the past few weeks I have had several conversations about standard work and who creates it. In each case I find myself trying to dispel one of the most common myths of the Toyota Production System: that the workers themselves crea

Cardinal Virtues and Leadership Series: Prudence

By Ron Pereira - October 27th, 2009

“In everything consider the consequences.” – La Fontaine A few articles ago I proposed the idea that successful leaders, in addition to being humble, should also practice the 4 Cardinal virtues. I also committed to ex

Your Important Feedback Requested: A Simple 2 Question Survey

By Ron Pereira - October 26th, 2009

I would really appreciate your thoughts on this simple, 2 question survey that should take less than 30 seconds to complete. A big thanks in advance for your time and valuable insight! Click Here to take survey

Skitt’s Law Applied to Kaizen

By Jon Miller - October 26th, 2009

I became aware of a truth about lean problem solving and kaizen yesterday while reading an article about ten internet rules and laws. 4. Skitt’s Law Expressed as “any post correcting an error in another post will contain at

MBWA: Management by Watching the Actual

By Jon Miller - October 23rd, 2009

MBWA was briefly a fad when it was known as Management by Walking Around. Supposedly the visibility of management in the workplace as well as the attention by management improved communication and performance. These days we don’t

Brilliant Value Stream Mapping Icon Fonts

By Jon Miller - October 20th, 2009

Yesterday, Jamie Flinchbaugh shared a discovery on his blog. Also, the nice folks at Ambor have developed several very useful fonts for Lean. Skill Matrix Font The Harvey Balls ideograms are great for filling out the skill matri

Thank You and Last Chance to Purchase Lean Audio Book at $7.95

By Ron Pereira - October 19th, 2009

Just a quick post to thank all of you that have purchased the LSS Academy Guide to Lean Audio Book. Your generous support helps us pay the bills around here (i.e. monthly hosting, site maintenance, etc.) without having to plaster annoy

What Would Newt Gingrich do with American Health Care?

By Jon Miller - October 17th, 2009

Newt Gingrich is an American scholar, politician and a man of big ideas. Not all big ideas are meant to be put into practice, but these comments from an interview in The Intelligencer article titled Gingrich: Republican Party Recoverin

Blog Action Day: Climate Change

By Jon Miller - October 15th, 2009

More than 10,000 blogs are writing about climate change today. That’s pretty amazing. It’s not quite like writing 10,000 letters to liberate political prisoners. It’s an interesting way to use the internet to build aw

Month: October 2009