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Jon Miller

Jon has dedicated his 25+ year career to the field of kaizen, continuous improvement, and lean management. Jon spent the first eighteen years of his life in Japan, then graduated from McGill University with a bachelor’s in linguistics.

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1485 Articles

Now More Than Ever, Huddle Daily as a Team

By Jon Miller - March 30th, 2020

One of the challenges we face when working from home, or as part of a virtual team, is staying connected with people on the team. Today more of us than ever are in this situation for the first time due to stay-at-home orders related to

Respect and Gratitude to the Base of the Pyramid

By Jon Miller - March 23rd, 2020

One of the most important geometric shapes in lean management is the inverted triangle. Pyramids are commonly used to represent an organization chart. The boss is at the tip of the pyramid, with senior leaders immediately below, and th

The Unexpected Benefit of Cancelling Everything

By Jon Miller - March 16th, 2020

In the past week an unprecedented wave of closures, cancellations, and restrictions on the movement of people has passed over the world. No doubt there is more to come in the following days as local and national authorities work to con

Five Reasons Why It’s Hard to Stay Lean

By Jon Miller - March 9th, 2020

Many organizations find that they don’t always sustain the gain they make from continuous improvement activity. Over the long-term, this is one of the greatest challenges to keeping management committed to building a Lean culture

One Point Lesson: How to Wash Your Hands

By Jon Miller - March 2nd, 2020

This is a public service announcement with a touch of Lean learning. One of the best ways to avoid infection from the novel corona virus known as COVID-19 is to wash our hands. Should we be exposed to the virus, proper hand-washing can

Productivity, the Three-day Weekend the Future of Work

By Jon Miller - February 24th, 2020

An interesting news feature on NPR reported on a company called Perpetual Guardian which launched successful 4-day work week program for their employees. People are paid their full five-day wage, as long as they get their work done in

How Mindfulness Practices Enable Lean Culture

By Jon Miller - February 17th, 2020

The popularity of mindfulness has spread beyond self-help and personal wellness. Many organizations in fields such as business, healthcare and government are providing their leaders with mindfulness education and practices. The claimed

What are the “Respect for Humanity” Questions?

By Jon Miller - February 10th, 2020

Lean management aims to make work easier, safer, better, faster and cheaper. The first two centuries of continuous improvement focused on invention, tinkering, and innovation in machinery and materials. With the growth of the service s

When an Ounce of Prevention is Worth a Billion Pounds of Global GDP

By Jon Miller - February 3rd, 2020

This simple chart gets to the heart how Lean processes, systems and behaviors keep costs low. In brief, the earlier we detect and address problems, the less it costs. This is a broad, common sense principle. It applies to safety incide

How Lean Deployment Is Like Working with Two-Part Epoxy

By Jon Miller - January 27th, 2020

This weekend while working on a particularly challenging home repair project I had the opportunity to work with a two-part epoxy. These are adhesives that create very strong bonds that hold up in many environments and conditions. But

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