Jon Miller, Author at Gemba Academy

Are Holidays Batch Processing?

By Jon Miller - May 4th, 2009

Getting back into the swing of things after most of last week away on holiday, a thought popped into my head: “Are holidays batch processing?” Something about how we spend time at work and how we take time off reminds me of

The Lean System is Making the Most of What You've Got

By Jon Miller - May 2nd, 2009

If I had a dollar bill for every time someone said to me “This is not Japan” or “We don’t build automobiles” or “We don’t make the same thing over and over again like Toyota” then I would

Taiichi Ohno Quote of the Day: My First Move

By Jon Miller - April 29th, 2009

My first move as the manager of the machine shop was to introduce standardized work. How many people can say that the first thing they did when taking on a management position was to introduce standardized work? I certainly can’t

Leader Standard Work and Material Control

By Jon Miller - April 27th, 2009

I am taking some time off with the family this week so any posts will be short and less than fully developed. The emerging thought of the day concerns the relationship between leader standard work and material control principles of

The Drop, the Bucket and Continuous Improvement

By Jon Miller - April 22nd, 2009

Mr. Obama, who held his first cabinet meeting Monday, has tasked officials with finding $100 million in savings. Asked by reporters after the meeting if that amount is a drop in the bucket of the government’s budget, Mr. Obama sa

The A3 Thinking Blog

By Jon Miller - April 20th, 2009

Launched quietly in March by Art Amalley and Prof. Durward Sobek, authors of the Understanding A3 Thinking book, the A3 Thinking Blog promises to be an excellent resource. So far there are just a handful of articles such as User Feedba

Visual Management Resource for Lean Hospitals

By Jon Miller - April 13th, 2009

Here is another recent find on visual management: the website of MediFilm “the leaders in healthcare visual management systems”. Who knew there was such a thing to be leaders of? Well done in any case, making a product out

Ask Gemba: Nuts and Bolts of the Andon System

By Jon Miller - April 12th, 2009

Bas Timmerman asked: We are in the process of designing a synchronised flow process with an intermittent transportation system for a new assembly line. We have no buffer positions in the line, so it is critical that we organise support

Go See the Visual Management Blog

By Jon Miller - April 10th, 2009

If you are looking for practical examples of visual controls for managing work in an office, go see the Visual Management Blog written by Xavier Quesada Allue, a software developer, Agile coach and project manager, it is full of photos

12 Leader Standard Work Questions to Ask on the Gemba

By Jon Miller - April 6th, 2009

Many leaders have heard the buzzword, read the book, picked up a pad and pen and headed out to the gemba to go see. Leader standard work is becoming a standard component of lean implementations everywhere. In essence it has always been

Plan Do Czech Act

By Jon Miller - April 5th, 2009

If there are three things I can’t resist they are Creating lists, Teasing the possibilities out of words, and Attempting to inject levity and fun into teaching kaizen. So please forgive the punning title. The factory tours I part

Corporate Models of the Future (with bonus Ohno Circle exercise)

By Jon Miller - March 29th, 2009

How Crisis Shapes the Corporate Model is an interesting article in the March 28, 2009, New York Times. It gives some history of how past economic shifts have affected the structure and nature of corporations. The article speculates on

Happiness the Kaizen Way

By Jon Miller - March 26th, 2009

“There are two ways of being happy: We may either diminish our wants or augment our means – either will do – the result in the same; and it is for each man to decide for himself, and do that which happens to be the ea

How Do Lean Processes Prevent Human Error?

By Jon Miller - March 24th, 2009

Scott asked an important question on how lean processes can be used to prevent human errors. The good news is that lean processes not only support quality but they lean cannot function without a strong quality culture and organizationa

Kaizen Exercise: Stand in the Circle

By Jon Miller - March 23rd, 2009

Class dismissed. Your assignment for today is to go stand in the circle. Waste never sleeps. We have an hour. Let’s go see. The assignment is simple: find a spot to observe the process silently. Stand and observe for 30 min. Writ

Ask Gemba: Do We Need the 4th and 5th S?

By Jon Miller - March 20th, 2009

Personally I don’t care a great deal for the 4th and 5th S. The team activity of throwing things out, rearranging and cleaning things up can be a blast. Once that’s done and the excitement wears off, the daily maintenance a

10 Things the Amish Can Teach Toyota Leadership

By Jon Miller - March 18th, 2009

Some of my friend have shared stories with me recently of the genchi genbutsu trips Toyota executives from Japan have been making by visiting factories overseas. On their next visit they should take a slight detour to to one of the Mid

Accountability for Continuous Improvement

By Jon Miller - March 16th, 2009

Last week a reader by the handle of CILean asked Gemba: I have trouble with staff who appear generally supportive of improvement projects and agree with Senior Management on proposed actions but then fail to implement agreed changes an

Gemba Academy Preview: Calculating Takt Time

By Jon Miller - March 15th, 2009

Gemba Academy opens for enrollment on Monday March 16th, 2009. In the coming months we will offer online training on topics on a wide range of business excellence topics from lean manufacturing, project management, six sigma and other

An Electrically Delicious Lesson on Kaizen

By Jon Miller - March 14th, 2009

What would you do if given a do-or-die mission to create a battery out of simple, non-toxic materials, from a sustainable source, without using specialized equipment, with the added requirements that said battery must prevent scurvy an

Should Cross-trained Workers be Paid More?

By Jon Miller - March 12th, 2009

“Now that I can perform more tasks, pay me more.” This was the statement that an HR manager was struggling with recently at a company that is in the midst of introducing cross-training for multi-skilled operators as part of

5S Overview Video

By Jon Miller - March 11th, 2009

The launch of our online training service Gemba Academy is just days away. We have been busy at work readying online training courses for lean manufacturing, six sigma, project management and more. We will offer six month subscriptions

Kaizen and the Art of Elephant Eating

By Jon Miller - March 10th, 2009

Do you have an elephant that needs to be eaten? If you did, would you know? There is something called the elephant test which comes from the field of law. It is often used for cases in which something “is hard to describe, but in

"Lean Factories Find It Hard to Cut Jobs"

By Jon Miller - March 9th, 2009

…even in a slump, or so says an article in today’s Wall Street Journal. It’s an unfortunate title with a collection of half-truths about lean manufacturing, some contradictory, that leaves one unsure at the end whethe

Ambiguous Visual Controls: When Words Aren’t Necessary

By Jon Miller - March 8th, 2009

Visual controls must by definition be clear indicators of normal versus abnormal, go versus no go, okay versus not okay. The sign above isn’t at all bad compared to other ambiguous visual controls we’ve featured here, here

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