Jon Miller, Author at Gemba Academy

Exterior of a Costco Wholesale warehouse

Lean Leadership Lessons from Costco Wholesale

By Jon Miller - February 15th, 2013

While shopping through the cavernous aisles of my local Costco, my mind started to think about the lean leadership lessons to be had. Costco Wholesale is the third largest retailer in the United States with 2012 sales of $87 billion an

Thomas Huxley Quotes on Managing by Fact

By Jon Miller - February 13th, 2013

Management by fact is a key guiding principle of kaizen and lean thinking. By gathering facts and evidence people are able to communicate realities, define problems, and convert them into opportunities to improve the situation. Many of

Kaizen, Japan and Achilles’ Heel in Reverse

By Jon Miller - February 11th, 2013

The article Kaizen – the Achilles heel of Japan on a blog titled “On the Surface – Logical thinking in an everyday world” (which I suspect may be a title attempting irony but at two posts it is too early to tell

Ambiguous Visual Controls: Labeling Confusion

By Jon Miller - January 19th, 2013

A label is a visual control that should clarify, not confuse. Here is an ambiguous visual control, its intentions good but lost in translation. Does metal stand in an airport even need a label? Perhaps. There is not much else that one

Review of The Laws of Subtraction by Matthew May

By Jon Miller - January 13th, 2013

First of all I would like to thank Matthew May for the opportunity to contribute a page to his book, and for the review copy of the book. With greater skill in subtraction, my days will be less full and future reviews will no doubt be

Lean Leader Arrives at the Top of China

By Jon Miller - January 9th, 2013

I took a clipping from the December 5th 2012 edition of the China Daily, the article titled pomp and ceremony must end. Xi Jinping, the new leader of China urged officials to “slash red tape, including unnecessary visits, meeting

Ambiguous Visual Controls: No Dogs Allowed

By Jon Miller - January 8th, 2013

This one hurt my head a little.

The Kaizen Way for Resolutions

By Jon Miller - January 1st, 2013

The New Year is a time for reflecting on the past annual cycle, the one to come, and for making resolutions. The question on my mind is “Why do plans go awry?” In truth my goals and resolutions from year to year do not diff

Plain-spoken Interview with Masaaki Imai

By Jon Miller - November 27th, 2012

If wisdom comes from time spent on the front lines where the action is, what does that make senior executives at large companies whose roles remove them from the front lines? Masaaki Imai minces no words on this and other topics in thi

Following the Muri Mura Strategy

By Jon Miller - November 26th, 2012

In the Seattle Times article Boeing Dreamliner on track, but rework may stretch to 2015, aerospace executives reported to Wall Street analysts the company’s historic scientific milestone of bending the fabric of time and space, a

Challenging “Challenge” within the Toyota Way

By Jon Miller - November 14th, 2012

At the heart of the Toyota Way are two pillars, Continuous Improvement and Respect for People. These are supported by five values, Challenge, Improvement, Genchi Genbutsu, Respect and Teamwork. The word “challenge” means ei

The First Emperor of China Followed the Toyota Way?

By Jon Miller - November 12th, 2012

A November 2nd article in Sci-News.com proposes Toyota’s Labor Model Used in China 2,200 Years Ago. China’s first emperor Qin Shi Huang is known as not only a conqueror and stabilizer of warring kingdoms, but a great standa

Panta Rei

By Jon Miller - November 11th, 2012

“If we want things to stay as they are, they will have to change.” The Leopard, Giuseppe Tomasi di Lampedusa

Retail Values for Lean Leadership

By Jon Miller - October 17th, 2012

Here is a photo of an excellent visual control and reminder to the staff of a local independent bookstore. It says Talk to everyone. Greet everyone who comes through the door. Be out on the floor. Get to know the books!! There are stro

The Best Kaizen is Still Better Kaizen

By Jon Miller - October 1st, 2012

It’s quite unexpected to be quoted, particularly when I have no recollection or record of it. Nevertheless, I stand by these words of mine, originally published in The Daily Kaizen blog by the experienced lean practitioners at Gr

The Global Food Waste Scandal

By Jon Miller - September 28th, 2012

“Stop wasting food. Thank you very much.” So ends the TED talk by Tristram Stuart titled The global food waste scandal. Pictured above, Tristram stands behind a mound of perfectly edible but imperfectly shaped bananas, one

Visualizing the Benefit of Small Improvement Steps

By Jon Miller - September 21st, 2012

One of the foundational principles of kaizen is that one takes many small steps toward the ideal condition, continually. The strength of this approach is that by keeping the steps small it is both psychologically and physically easier

Kaizen Song: Writing Solid Problem Statements

By Jon Miller - September 17th, 2012

This kaizen song about 99 problems was inspired by an ingenious contest to mash-up Lean memes and American pop culture by author, blogger and consultant Mark Graban. Here is… Writing Solid Problem Statements (melody – ̶

Innovation is Nothing but ECRS

By Jon Miller - August 21st, 2012

Kirby Ferguson explains in a TED video that Everything is a remix. What seems new is actually something old, but changed. This is a familiar idea in the continuous improvement field, and a place of significant overlap with the nuts and

Hack Days, 20% Time and Kaizen Events

By Jon Miller - August 9th, 2012

The 20%Doctrine How Tinkering, Goofing Off, and Breaking the Rules at Work Drive Success in Business by Ryan Tate introduces the concept of “hack days” popularized by software development teams within companies such as Goog

Hoshin Kanri as Both Strategy and Meta-strategy

By Jon Miller - August 3rd, 2012

Meta is one of my favorite four-letter words. People don’t use it often enough. Being meta is what makes ideas curl back upon themselves, thereby enriching our understanding of them. For example there is meta-emotion (our feeling

Five Key Change Lessons from Poor Economics by Banerjee and Duflo

By Jon Miller - July 8th, 2012

Poor Economics: A Radical Rethinking of the Way to Fight Global Poverty by Abhijit Banerjee and Esther Duflo is full of fact-based insights on the lives of 865 millions people living on less than $0.99, and how to improve them. The aut

Remove Waste, Uncover Individual Human Beings

By Jon Miller - July 5th, 2012

Taiichi Ohno’s Workplace Management was originally published in 1982, following his first book, Toyota Production System which came out in 1978. In the preface to the 1987 English language version of Workplace Management, Taiichi

The Neglected Art and Science of Organization (re)Design

By Jon Miller - July 3rd, 2012

I follow three simple rules whenever looking at an organization chart with a view to improving its effectiveness. First, remove structural causes of delay or loss in information and decision flow wherever possible. Second, decrease spa

World Peace through 5S

By Jon Miller - July 2nd, 2012

Congratulations to Kaizen Institute Romania, KI Japan for the 2nd successful “5S in the City” event. In cooperation with the Japanese non-profit organization 日本を美しくする会 (Organization to Clean Up Japan), a t

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