Jon Miller, Author at Gemba Academy

Lean Gurus Womack, Jones & Shook in 70-minute Video

By Jon Miller - November 14th, 2013

The Lean Enterprise Institute in cooperation with Gemba Academy has produced a free online 70-minute video discussion among Lean gurus and thought leaders James Womack, Dan Jones and John Shook. The 11 videos cover a range of themes in

Process, Results & the Anti-Portfolio

By Jon Miller - November 13th, 2013

What’s an “Anti-Portfolio”? It’s what students or organizational culture would call an artifact. The anti-portfolio is a collection of terrible decisions and costly mistakes, in the same way that a portfolio of

Gemba Online Learning Content Update

By Jon Miller - November 10th, 2013

Video-based Lean training pioneer Gemba Academy has steadily built up a library of learning modules over the past four years. With over 500 high definition videos that can be accessed via DVD or from ain internet connection, new conten

How to Engage People

By Jon Miller - November 4th, 2013

A recent Gallup poll showed that a whopping 70% of American workers were either not engaged or actively disengaged from their work. That’s about 70 million people who don’t care about or hate their job. More than the entire

It’s So Good Because It’s So Mutual

By Jon Miller - October 27th, 2013

Over the last couple of years both the application and meaning of “Lean” has been broadened, stretched, and even re-imagined quite a bit. This is largely thanks to its discovery and adoption by people from the software deve

What Culture Supports a Lean Startup Approach?

By Jon Miller - October 8th, 2013

Today I was fortunate to have the opportunity to sit in on a webinar titled Bringing Lean to Established Companies by lean startup gurus Eric Ries, Brant Cooper, and Patrick Vlaskovits. The webinar was not about bringing Lean per se bu

Process, Result and Value for the Community

By Jon Miller - October 6th, 2013

Last week I had the opportunity to speak in front of group of people learning and leading continuous improvement paired with respect for humanity, at the Lean HR Summit. One of myths of Lean that I attempted to bust was that the prime

Kaizen Song: Come All You A3 Thinkers

By Jon Miller - September 29th, 2013

Based on “Come All You Coal Miners”, this is the kaizen song… Come All You A3 Thinkers Come all you A3 thinkers wherever you may be And learn of a storyline, from circles of QC The name is nothing special, but its ste

The Man Who Saved Kaizen

By Jon Miller - September 20th, 2013

It is with love and gratitude that we remember Eiji Toyoda, the man who forever changed how the world improves the way we work. He passed on this week, aged 100. He engineered the successful Toyota-GM join venture in California known a

OH NO You Didn't Really Say That!

By Jon Miller - September 16th, 2013

It pains me to even write these words again: “All we are doing is looking at the time line, from the moment the customer gives us an order to the point when we collect the cash. And we are reducing that time line by removing the

8 More Lean Concept Clarifications

By Jon Miller - September 12th, 2013

Everyday conversations with lean learners and lean practitioners make me think that this problem of the erosion of meaning, or even extensions of transference is not unique to A3 thinking. In fact we could list lightly-learned or misin

The Great A3 Thinking Fallacy

By Jon Miller - September 8th, 2013

What lean or six sigma practitioner doesn’t love A3 thinking? It’s versatile, low-tech, and seemingly easy to learn and teach. The trouble is that just about every plan or report or problem solving summary on a page is gett

Why Organizational Culture is a Monster

By Jon Miller - August 20th, 2013

Organizational culture matters because culture makes the difference between whether we execute good ideas or not. Good ideas abound, but the world sorely lacks in evidence for the increase in the adoption and long-term follow-through o

The ABCs of Organizational Culture

By Jon Miller - August 15th, 2013

Like the light of our sun on the dark side of the moon, the light of critical inquiry falls too rarely on organizational culture during a lean startup launch or a lean enterprise transformation. We have made organizational culture, its

Ambiguous Visual Controls: Artifacts of Cultural Assumptions

By Jon Miller - August 13th, 2013

Clear and effective visual controls need to alert the viewer of normal versus abnormal conditions and/or provide guidance towards acting in accordance to the norm or standard. The street sign above is provided by the Tokyo metropolitan

Why Workarounds Happen

By Jon Miller - August 8th, 2013

A recent experience while attempting to depart from an equatorial country made me reflect on why workarounds happen. As I checked in to my flight, the airline staff asked to see my yellow fever card while entering my passport informati

Standard Work for Astronauts

By Jon Miller - July 30th, 2013

Here is a good example of standard work for knowledge workers. Astronauts are probably some of the best educated and best trained people on the planet (and off-planet for that matter). Those of us who think that we can’t have dai

Contradiction in Terms? Lean Buffet

By Jon Miller - July 14th, 2013

I had the occasion to dine at the Golden Jaguar Buffet in Shanghai. Buffets are seldom the places to observe Lean practices in any way or form, but the Jaguar offered a few things of note. First, the place setting at the tables contain

Review of Conversational Capacity by Craig Weber

By Jon Miller - June 24th, 2013

My latest recommended reading for people who care about getting things done is Conversational Capacity: The Secret to Building Successful Teams That Perform When the Pressure Is On (McGraw-Hill, 2013) by Craig Weber. Pressure being off

George and the Amazing One-piece Flow Meal Truck

By Jon Miller - June 23rd, 2013

This YouTube video titled “Meals Per Hour”, tells the story of volunteers applying kaizen to improve the delivery of meals to Superstorm Sandy victims. Toyota volunteers teach food bank staff how to improve through focused,

Review of Perfecting Patient Journeys

By Jon Miller - May 13th, 2013

Perfecting Patient Journeys by Judy Worth, Tom Shuker, Beau Keyte, Karl Ohaus, Jim Luckman, David Verble, Kirk Paluska, Todd Nickel and Sam Watson is the latest in a series of practical workbooks from the Lean Enterprise Institute. Thi

Is it Worth the Time to Kaizen This?

By Jon Miller - May 4th, 2013

If you have ever wondered, “is it worth the time to kaizen this?” here is your guide to answer that question. It’s from a strictly mathematical point of view, and keep in mind this is assuming five-year payback, so ad

Ambiguous Visual Controls: Stamping Out Taxi Sheep Abandonment

By Jon Miller - April 11th, 2013

It’s good to see the transportation authorities finally doing something about the problem of sheep abandonment in taxis. Hopefully this will put an end to the awkwardness of having to hand a lamb to the driver and explain that it

The Three Rules for Rules

By Jon Miller - March 8th, 2013

Many individuals view rules, standards, and policies as constricting, even at the mere mention of them. It is true that rules which are inadequately designed and implemented can be restrictive. Nevertheless, a complete absence of rules

Heard on the Gemba: We Are Great Problem Solvers, But…

By Jon Miller - February 26th, 2013

I recently heard from a Gemba conversation: “We are great problem solvers, but the same problems keep coming back.” Mastering Root Causes: Lessons from Toyota When the countermeasures are off target, the problems reo

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