Placing a Popular Taiichi Ohno Quote in Context

By Jon Miller - June 24th, 2012

There is a popular quote by Taiichi Ohno which has always bothered me. Unless you are completely new to Lean, you’ve seen it. “All we are doing is looking at the time line, from the moment the customer gives us an order to

Kaizen Transformation Update from Procon Engineering

By Jon Miller - June 4th, 2012

We have shared updates on the kaizen journey at Procon Engineering of Karachi, Pakistan from time to time (TPM story, COPQ story). S.M. Junaid has been very patient with me over the past few months, sending me news which I have not pos

Go to Gembanana

By Jon Miller - June 2nd, 2012

The Wall Street Journal article titled Five Lessons From the Banana Man introduces us to the practical business wisdom of Samuel Zemurray, the former head of the United Fruit Company. The article is a good reminder that so-called Lean

Where is Your Suggestion Box?

By Jon Miller - May 15th, 2012

The placement of a suggestion box within an organization speaks volumes about their level of commitment and sophistication in pursuing customer service, quality and continuous improvement. The example above was in the lobby of a county

How is PDCA Inimical to Innovation?

By Jon Miller - May 8th, 2012

PDCA. Plan, Do, Check, Act. This process is at the core of kaizen, lean, six sigma, continuous improvement, hoshin kanri, the scientific method and the learning organization. I also believe that the PDCA cycle is inherent to the creati

How to do Hansei

By Jon Miller - May 4th, 2012

I am wrapping up a fairly intensive period of reflection. This week was the first board meeting since the merger of Gemba Research and Kaizen Institute nearly 18 months ago. It has been a time of challenge, opportunity and personal gro

How to Tell if a Visual Control is Working

By Jon Miller - April 21st, 2012

Humans Wanted for Lean Journey. Small Wages, Bitter Cold, Constant Danger…

By Jon Miller - April 19th, 2012

Ernest Shackleton was a British explorer celebrated for his exploration of the Antarctic. During the 1914-1917 expedition aboard the aptly-named Endurance, he lead his crew without loss of life through disasters which included their sh

Ambiguous Visual Controls: Prehistoric Shark Attack Evacuation Plan

By Jon Miller - April 14th, 2012

This may be the most unhelpful emergency evacuation visual control in the United States of America. The evacuation plan resembles a journey through a shark’s intestines. Should one need to actually consult it, the ability to read

Ambiguous Visual Controls: Never stay in rooms 601-617

By Jon Miller - April 10th, 2012

This ambiguous visual control creates more doubts than assurances. What is the message here? Do some people prefer and wish to be directed to the unclean rooms? Room 621 was in fact quite nice.

Yet More Musings on Muda

By Jon Miller - April 1st, 2012

Michel Baudin’s blog article More Musings on Muda, meant to end fruitless debate on the definitions and categorizations of the types of waste, in fact, led to some brief but interesting exchanges on Twitter. The discussion center

Review of The Lean Startup by Eric Ries

By Jon Miller - March 27th, 2012

My experience with startups extends to starting Gemba Research, a consulting and training company which we merged last year with Kaizen Institute, Gemba Academy, an online lean training venture, and three other business selling lean-re

Lean, Bias, Impartiality and Justness

By Jon Miller - March 18th, 2012

I considered myself to be appropriately biased against biases, but it turned out I was wrong. Such is often the way with cognitive biases. Reading Daniel Kahneman’s book Thinking, Fast and Slow, I learned to think of biases in a

Lean Retail Exercise: “Not My Job” Edition

By Jon Miller - March 1st, 2012

The retail industry has a poor image when it comes to the motivation level of its employees. They are often portrayed in popular culture as neither well-trained nor well-paid, not always inspired to deliver a great customer experience.

Building Excellent Systems: Top-down or Bottom-up?

By Jon Miller - February 27th, 2012

“We have to take these pockets of excellence, these islands of excellence and make them systems of excellence.” These could be words of an executive in encouragement of a kaizen team, spoken in any number of languages, at a

Consumption Rate, Replenishment Time, SWIP and Why Glaciers Need Love

By Jon Miller - January 22nd, 2012

Over the past week, the greater Seattle area was met with the largest snowfall in a decade or two. Recently I was in New York City, where the season’s supply of snow had dropped last October, with barely a blizzard since. Back in

10 Rules for Good Gemba Walks

By Jon Miller - January 12th, 2012

Elmore Leonard is an American novelist who has written lean and taut crime novels for a half-century. He is the Toyota of crime novels if that’s a compliment. Reliable, not flashy, always delivering on the promise of a hard-boile

Kanban: The Art of the Japanese Shop Sign

By Jon Miller - January 4th, 2012

The kanban has met many adventures on its way to becoming a popular tool for the limitation of tasks, projects and works in process. As superhero origin stories go, kanban has an interesting one. As long ago as 8th century Japan, guide

Leaning Into 2012

By Jon Miller - January 1st, 2012

Many years ago when I was first learning how to drive a car, my dear young aunt Ruth rode with me on an Illinois country road. She taught me the importance of accelerating when going into a curve. This was deeply counter-intuitive to m

The 5th Myth about the Respect for People Principle

By Jon Miller - December 7th, 2011

In an excellent blog post by Jamie Flinchbaugh today he introduces 4 myths about the principle of “Respect for People”, saying: But respect for people means different things to different people. To some it means avoiding la

Kaizen and the Moisture Content of Fabrics

By Jon Miller - December 2nd, 2011

Fabric is one of the oldest technological artifacts of humanity. Water is essential to our survival and ubiquitous in our daily lives. So it is fitting that these two things come together in a metaphor about kaizen – changing thi

Live Seminar: Built-in Quality, Dallas – Dec. 5, 2011

By Jon Miller - November 28th, 2011

Peterbilt Motors, Gemba Academy and Kaizen Institute are pleased to present a half-day live workshop on Monday December 5th 2011 on the subject of “Built-in Quality”, one of the two pillars of the Toyota Production System h

Batch Answers to Reader Questions

By Jon Miller - November 23rd, 2011

  The readers of Gemba Academy have expressed some questions and concerns regarding certain content in the blog articles. I’ll address some of the top concerns. Balancing Non-Value-Added Activities and Overprocessing in Know

Free Webinar "Continuous Improvement" Dec. 7, 2011

By Jon Miller - November 22nd, 2011

The Visual Management webinar with Kaizen Institute consultant Mike Wroblewski was immensely popular, and we are pleased to announce the next free webinar from Gemba Academy. Webinar: Putting the Continuous Back in Continuous Improveme

Management Improvement Carnival #149

By Jon Miller - November 20th, 2011

I’m honored once again to contribute to the Management Improvement Carnival series which John Hunter at the Curious Cat Management Improvement blog has kept going now to its 149th round. As I looked back over some of the blog pos