January 2011 | Gemba Academy

Practice Makes Champions

By Ron Pereira - January 31st, 2011

A few months ago I wrote about my soccer coaching experiences with my daughter’s U7 team. To conclude that article I mentioned we were about to start playing indoor soccer. Well, that indoor season ended Friday night… and I’m hap

The Importance of Metering the Smallest Losses

By Jon Miller - January 26th, 2011

There is an expression in Japanese, 　「ちりも積もれば山となる」　”Dust accumulates to form a mountain.” (chiri mo tsumoreba yama to naru). While this may not be geologically correct, it carries a deep truth

Why Don’t We See More QC Circles?

By Jon Miller - January 24th, 2011

In the early 1990s I recall my Japanese sensei were absolutely appalled at the dearth of industrial engineers and production engineers within the ranks of the major American manufacturers who hired them as kaizen consultants. The cycle

Applying Lean at a Food Bank

By Ron Pereira - January 24th, 2011

** Updated Jan 13, 2017 ** It seems the original video linked in this blog article has been removed. Not to worry, we found another great video for you to enjoy! ** Original Post Below ** Hat tip to my friend, and business partner, K

Intel Volunteers Apply Lean Principles to Food Bank

By Jon Miller - January 22nd, 2011

My friend Kevin Meyer of Superfactory shared a great example of lean principles being applied beyond manufacturing to help a non-profit organization become more productive in serving the needs of the community. Roadrunner Food Bank put

3rd Annual Management Blog Review 2 of 2: The Lean Thinker

By Jon Miller - January 20th, 2011

Mark Rosenthal has a lot to think about. For the past several decades he has seen companies struggle, fail and succeed at implementing lean thinking. He has played a role in the success at Boeing, Terex and Eastman-Kodak to name just a

We Need Less FAKE Lean, More FAIL Lean

By Jon Miller - January 18th, 2011

This week in Bob Emiliani’s e-newlsetter Lean Leadership News, he addresses two interesting questions: “Does an organization need to start with Fake Lean?” “Is that a key part of the learning process on the way

3rd Annual Management Blog Review 1 of 2: DailyKaizen

By Jon Miller - January 18th, 2011

Every so often John Hunter of the Curious Cat Management Improvement Blog organizes a handful of us to review the writing of other bloggers. The 3rd annual review involves 14 bloggers introducing the work of 50 others. My choice was to

The Only Type of Kaizen is Daily Kaizen

By Jon Miller - January 17th, 2011

Last week I was asked to identify the three types of kaizen. People feel the need to classify. Boundaries are useful approximations and should not limit us too much in practice. The three types of kaizen commonly identified are big, me

Standardization Video

By Ron Pereira - January 16th, 2011

This video focuses on the extremely important topic of Standardization. It’s also the first video of Gemba Academy’s latest course focused entirely on the lean concept of Standard Work. To learn more about this Standard Wor

Month: January 2011