Jon Miller, Author at Gemba Academy

Here are 4.5 Signs that Your Lean May be L.A.M.E.

By Jon Miller - March 22nd, 2007

Mark Graban at the Lean Blog coined L.A.M.E. as “Lean As Misguidedly Executed” and Kevin Meyer at the Evolving Excellence blog builds on this idea in pointing out how Lean is often added on in press releases, though it may

Work in Process in Knowledge Work

By Jon Miller - March 21st, 2007

The Lean principles of the seven types of waste, flow, building in quality at each step, and making small improvements locally each day are all readily accepted by knowledge workers with a minimum of explanation and demonstration. Visu

Safety Glasses Are a Sign of Unsafe Processes

By Jon Miller - March 20th, 2007

I left the training room too eager to go to gemba today and forgot to put on my safety glasses. Within two minutes one of the safety coordinators on the shop floor stopped me and sent me back to get them. Kudos to the management of thi

Reading Lean for Dummies

By Jon Miller - March 17th, 2007

I just finished reading Lean for Dummies. It covers a lot of ground in 362 pages. It’s full of diagrams, lists and other useful visuals. It is light and accessible reading. Parts IV “The Lean Enterprise” and Part V &#

The Kaizen Mindset Requires Starting with Scarcity

By Jon Miller - March 16th, 2007

We have been fortunate to visit Ricoh factories in Japan and in my opinion Ricoh is an excellent company and a great example of implementing the Toyota Production System outside of the automotive industry. They are also a leader in red

Nine Rules for Fighting Endless Meetings

By Jon Miller - March 15th, 2007

I’ve heard that at Toyota the meetings are 60 minutes long, with 50 minutes of actual meeting time and 10 minutes to get to the next meeting. The use of the standardize A3 size one-page format to communicate the progress on PDCA

Taking the Toyota Production System to City Hall

By Jon Miller - March 14th, 2007

There was an encouraging article about Lean government in the March 15, 2007 NB Online (Nikkei Business) titled City Hall in Aichi Studies at Toyota to “Enhance the Capabilities of the Staff (愛知の市役所がトヨタで修

Lean for People of Average Intelligence

By Jon Miller - March 12th, 2007

When do you know a management concept has hit the mainstream? Like a bug to a windshield, “Lean” as a management approach has now hit bookshelves in the form of Lean for Dummies. It set me off on a minor rant in the office

The War On Waste

By Jon Miller - March 11th, 2007

During training in how to do kaizen, a key activity is helping people understand the concept of waste and make it relevant to their own organization and to their own work. As long as waste is something abstract, or something that happe

Quick Changeover and SMED for the Office

By Jon Miller - March 9th, 2007

A reader named Sonu read the article Kaizen is Like Climbing a Mountain: Drive Stakes in Along the Way. She asked, “Can single-minute exchange of dies concept be used in the office?” Yes! Since SMED or single-minute exchang

The 5 Why Questions, Like All Roads, Lead to Rome

By Jon Miller - March 7th, 2007

Today Patrick Shumaker from Gemba forwarded a great example of asking “Why?” persistently until the root cause is found. Why are U.S. standard railroad gages 4 feet 8.5 inches? Rome. You can find the full story on this bull

Build a Workplace You Can Be Proud Of

By Jon Miller - March 6th, 2007

People talk about pride. It’s a funny thing. I’ve never seen a “pride” poster in a factory or workplace that had their 5S down, good visual management in place and smiling employees. Maybe they 5S-ed the pride p

Give Me 60 Minutes and I’ll Give You a Lean Transformation

By Jon Miller - March 5th, 2007

That’s 60 minutes from everyone in supervisory position and above, at least once every three weeks, forever. If that’s too much to ask, save yourself two minutes and stop reading now. There’s something called “s

How Do You Sustain Improvement?

By Jon Miller - March 3rd, 2007

“How do you sustain improvement?” This is one of the most common questions posed to us about kaizen and Lean. I used to think this question required a thoughtful pause and a serious three-part reply. But lately I ask “

Lean Culture in a Temporary Workforce

By Jon Miller - March 1st, 2007

Can you have Lean manufacturing without Lean enterprise? Can you have Lean enterprise without a Lean culture? Can you have Lean culture without a motivated shop floor? All of the trappings of operational excellence such as one piece fl

Top 5 Things I’ve Never Heard from a Kaizen Team Member

By Jon Miller - February 28th, 2007

#5. “I’m surprised at how little we got done in four and a half days.” #4. “I have no concerns about these results being sustained.” #3. “Everything went as planned.” #2. “There’s n

How Much Should We Pay for Kaizen Ideas?

By Jon Miller - February 27th, 2007

“How much should we pay for kaizen ideas?” This is a question we often hear during a kaizen class. The type of kaizen we are talking about here is the everyone-everyday kind, otherwise known as the soikufu system in Japanes

Scott County Schools Trying Out the Toyota Way

By Jon Miller - February 26th, 2007

Today’s article in the Lexington Herald-Leader, The Scott County Way: Educators take a page from ‘The Toyota Way’ to boost curriculums, made my day a little bit better. It seemed only natural that Toyota’s corpo

Genchi Gembutsu at the Starbucks Coffee Company

By Jon Miller - February 24th, 2007

Toyota is not the only global brand having growing pains from its success these days. In today’s Wall Street Journal article titled Starbucks Chairman Says Trouble May Be Brewing, Starbucks Chairman Howard Schultz has sent out a

The Seven Habits of Toyota People

By Jon Miller - February 22nd, 2007

The harder Toyota’s overwhelming success becomes to ignore, the more books and articles are written about what makes them great. Many say the same thing, but in different ways. I’ve just started flipping through a Japanese

Lean Six Sigma is Not Lean

By Jon Miller - February 21st, 2007

Lean Six Sigma is not Lean. It is Six Sigma, but one that is more “Lean” than just regular “Six Sigma.” In the English language the adjective (Lean) modifies the noun or subject word (Six Sigma). So Lean Six Sig

Let’s Establish a Waste and Efficiency Tip Line… and then Another One

By Jon Miller - February 20th, 2007

I caught a rerun of The Daily Show with Jon Stewart last night on television. The bit of news involved the $22 billion in cash lost in Iraq during Paul Bremer’s time there. Both political parties want to be seen as addressing thi

Getting the CEO on a Kaizen Team is Like Pulling Teeth

By Jon Miller - February 19th, 2007

As I was flipping through my copy of the February 2007 issue of Dental Economics today, an interview with two Danaher executives caught my eye. Danaher is known as a leading American company who has quietly and profitably grown through

The Trouble with Exploring “all options” at Chrysler

By Jon Miller - February 18th, 2007

Chrysler is feeling the squeeze. Third quarter losses were twice as large as projected. The DaimlerChrysler leadership are using their wits in an ongoing effort to turn things around. Chief Executive Dieter Zetsche has stated that R

Not Enough “Toyota Way” in Factory Air?

By Jon Miller - February 16th, 2007

There’s a good article over at the New York Times on February 15, 2007 titled The ‘Toyota Way’ Is Translated for a New Generation of Foreign Managers. It’s not about putting Jeffrey Liker’s book The Toyota

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