Jon Miller, Author at Gemba Academy

Looking for Evidence of PDCA

By Jon Miller - November 21st, 2009

Lately I’ve been more mindful about looking for evidence of PDCA. The Plan, Do, Check, Act cycle is the essence of continuous improvement and about half of what makes a lean management system possible. The other part has somethin

No Excuses, Respect for People and Finishing Strong

By Jon Miller - November 19th, 2009

We often make excuses about why we can’t do something, whether it’s solve a problem, improve our situation or just get things done. My friend Róbert shared an inspiring video of a speech by Nick Vujicic. Nick is a man with

Made Up Lean Enterprise Statistics

By Jon Miller - November 17th, 2009

For a group of people who claim to practice management by fact and question the as-given condition, we in the lean community have a troubling habit of citing and accepting made up lean enterprise statistics. In fact I would say that at

Scientific Management 2.0

By Jon Miller - November 8th, 2009

Bob Emiliani wrote a thoughtful call to arms piece in the Superfactory articles section this week. Enticingly titled Free Money, Free Love it predictably delivers neither of those things. Instead Bob makes a case for the need for the l

The Kipling Method vs. the Ohno Method

By Jon Miller - November 4th, 2009

There is an interesting story told by Toyota veterans who worked directly with Taiichi Ohno. When the great sensei and architect of the Toyota Production System was introduced to the 5W1H questions for problem solving, he said “Y

The 5 Universal Laws of Gemba Management

By Jon Miller - November 2nd, 2009

When we say something is “not rocket science” we mean that it is not hard to figure out or to do. If managing people were as easy as rocket science I am sure a rocket scientist would have figured it out by now. Groups of pe

Green Manufacturing Tour of Toyota Tsutsumi

By Jon Miller - October 31st, 2009

An article on the CarAdvice.com.au website titled Toyota’s Tsutsumi Plant – tour a green role model highlights some of the advances Toyota has made at the factory which assembles the Prius hybrid car. Some featured environm

Who Sets the Standard?

By Jon Miller - October 29th, 2009

Over the past few weeks I have had several conversations about standard work and who creates it. In each case I find myself trying to dispel one of the most common myths of the Toyota Production System: that the workers themselves crea

Skitt’s Law Applied to Kaizen

By Jon Miller - October 26th, 2009

I became aware of a truth about lean problem solving and kaizen yesterday while reading an article about ten internet rules and laws. 4. Skitt’s Law Expressed as “any post correcting an error in another post will contain at

MBWA: Management by Watching the Actual

By Jon Miller - October 23rd, 2009

MBWA was briefly a fad when it was known as Management by Walking Around. Supposedly the visibility of management in the workplace as well as the attention by management improved communication and performance. These days we don’t

Brilliant Value Stream Mapping Icon Fonts

By Jon Miller - October 20th, 2009

Yesterday, Jamie Flinchbaugh shared a discovery on his blog. Also, the nice folks at Ambor have developed several very useful fonts for Lean. Skill Matrix Font The Harvey Balls ideograms are great for filling out the skill matrix. Comp

What Would Newt Gingrich do with American Health Care?

By Jon Miller - October 17th, 2009

Newt Gingrich is an American scholar, politician and a man of big ideas. Not all big ideas are meant to be put into practice, but these comments from an interview in The Intelligencer article titled Gingrich: Republican Party Recoverin

Taiichi Ohno Video on Youtube

By Jon Miller - October 14th, 2009

Only it’s in Turkish. Unfortunately that’s not one of my languages, and I can only hear brief snippets of Japanese beneath it, not enough to make out more than a few words. If any readers are capable in Turkish perhaps you

Words of Taiichi Ohno Sensei: Kaizen by Inspiration is Not Kaizen

By Jon Miller - October 13th, 2009

I was flipping through some Japanese books on sayings and speeches given by Taiichi Ohno looking for inspiration for a quick blog post when I found this passage: “Within the Toyota Production System, a lack of ability to do kaize

Seven Essential Qualities of a Lean Leader

By Jon Miller - October 11th, 2009

Profits are on the minds, tongues and priority lists of a lot of people lately. Companies are aggressively managing costs these days. As a result I am sad to see even some avowed lean leaders turning away from the principles and qualit

Online Training for Quick Changeover and SMED

By Jon Miller - October 7th, 2009

The Quick Changeover and SMED course is now available from Gemba Academy. There are 12 video modules with quizzes and supporting documents, for a total of approximately 6 hours of step by step learning. The twelve modules are; Module 1

Aquatic Life Forms and the Lean Organization

By Jon Miller - October 6th, 2009

One of the guiding principles of the lean approach to product and process design, known as the production preparation process (“3P”) is to learn from how nature does things. Nature, said Johannes Kepler, uses as little as p

How to Use 5S to Manage Kaizen

By Jon Miller - September 29th, 2009

Ronak asked: What should be ideal process flow for kaizen? What I mean is who can give their suggestions, how to evaluate kaizen event, should we plan an event on monthly basis? This is a good question and one that reveals how common i

A Tortoise and a Hare Get Into a Potato Sack…

By Jon Miller - September 24th, 2009

Jamie Flinchbaugh, author of The Hitchhiker’s Guide to Lean and founder of the Lean Learning Center has been a regular contributor to Lean Assembly magazine, the Lean Blog as well as Evolving Excellence. Now Jamie has his own blo

How to Be Lean in a Batch Production Industry

By Jon Miller - September 22nd, 2009

Faisal asked: How to use lean in batch production industry? Most of the time I hear customers saying “lean is for mass production companies and not for us.” This is a common question and one worth shining some light on. The

Toyota-style Problem Solving, Step 7: Check Both Process and Results

By Jon Miller - September 20th, 2009

The eight step description of the PDCA cycle of problem solving called Toyota Business Practice (TBP for short) or practical problem solving continues to top my list of important things everyone should know. I’m finding it surpri

The Wizard of Oz School of Lean

By Jon Miller - September 17th, 2009

The question is more than a month old (sorry Brian!) so perhaps it’s already been worked out with the client, but it was a good question I would like to address. Brian asked: Can you please share with me your thoughts on implemen

A mother and daughter shopping in a grocery store

Genchi Genbutsu on the Retail Floor

By Jon Miller - September 14th, 2009

The September 14, 2009 Wall Street Journal article Seeing Store Shelves Through Senior Eyes explains how retailers are applying the TPS principle of genchi genbutsu (go to the floor and see what’s really going on) in redesigning

Three Risks of Implementing Lean without Policy Deployment

By Jon Miller - September 13th, 2009

Ideally the goals of each discrete improvement activity are aligned with the goals of the overall improvement program or change deployment framework and this is also aligned with the strategic direction of the business. Unless you are

The e-mail gemba

By Jon Miller - September 10th, 2009

There is a lot to like about e-mail. Without its widespread adoption starting about 15 years ago I would not have kept in touch with many old friends. I can still remember writing letters, by hand, and waiting… E-mail has allowed

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