Jon Miller, Author at Gemba Academy

Toyota Rebrands in Canada

By Jon Miller - February 15th, 2007

Toyota Canada’s new guiding principle, slogan and value statement, to put it in marketing speak, is ‘make things better’. Toyota Canada gave itself a giant pat on the back in explaining the results of their extensive

Standard Work Needed for Use of Windows

By Jon Miller - February 14th, 2007

In chapter 32 of Taiichi Ohno’s Workplace Management, Ohno said, “There is a correct sequence to kaizen.” We must first study and improve the work itself (manual work) then improve the process (sequence, steps) and th

Rarely Has Ranting Been This Good

By Jon Miller - February 12th, 2007

Blogger BDG123 at Rantings on Markets, Economics and Business Strategy is an electrical engineer and mathematician by training, one-time corporate consultant and corporate sales and marketing executive in the information technology and

Building a Lean Video Library

By Jon Miller - February 11th, 2007

Our clients often ask us to help them with building a Lean video library. They want us to recommend 5 or 10 videos on Lean manufacturing that will help their people learn first the general concepts, then the more in-depth tools and sys

How to Calculate Standard Work in Process (SWIP) Quantity

By Jon Miller - February 8th, 2007

Standard Work is one of the more misunderstood concepts in Lean manufacturing. It is neither standardization nor work standards. You can learn more about Standard Work by looking at the following blog posts: Reflections on Standard Wor

The Toyota Way is Doing Obvious Things

By Jon Miller - February 6th, 2007

…but doing them exceptionally well. This was a comment from an economist on a TV news program in Japan I heard some while ago, that seems to have become common knowledge in Japanese business consciousness. This idea of the Toyota

We Made Someone at Toyota Headquarters Unhappy

By Jon Miller - February 5th, 2007

We teach the Toyota system. We want to teach it to as many people as want to learn about it. As a consequence we think we provide Toyota with good PR. It seems not everyone at Toyota headquarters agrees. Here is an e-mail we received l

How to Motivate People to Change, Part 3

By Jon Miller - February 1st, 2007

How do you motivate the people on the trailing edge of the bell curve? The so-called “anchor draggers” or CAVE people tend to attract the most attention or concern during the process of change. I wish we had time to bring e

How to Motivate People to Change, Part 2

By Jon Miller - January 31st, 2007

How to motivate people to change? A day later and I still don’t know, but Taiichi Ohno’s “game of wits” comes to mind (see chapter 25 of Workplace Management). A game is something that is fun. Most of us are mot

How to Motivate People to Change, Part 1

By Jon Miller - January 30th, 2007

How to motivate people to change? That question was asked recently. It’s a good question and one that we should not assume we know the answer to. It is not a question that should be addressed in your organizations by professional

Toyota Production System Implementation at Japan Post, Year 4

By Jon Miller - January 29th, 2007

Here is an update to the story of Toyota instructors teaching TPS to the Japan Post and a partial answer to the question Toyota Botches Lean Implementation at Japan Post? posted earlier in this blog. The following is a summary from the

Free Scholarship at the Lean Six Sigma Academy

By Jon Miller - January 28th, 2007

My friend Ron Pereira started a blog two weeks ago called Lean Six Sigma Academy. The articles so far have been an interesting mix of topics such as Process Mapping – Lean or Six Sigma Tool?, CAVE People, Lean or Six Sigma?, Six

Kaizen of the Month at Gemba, December 2006

By Jon Miller - January 26th, 2007

By Marcie MacRae Going into the holidays and having the majority of the staff out of the office can be a good time to implement a big kaizen in the office. This year while the staff was on winter holidays, the admin team and two consul

Lean Manufacturing: A Five-Year Fix?

By Jon Miller - January 24th, 2007

On the way to the gemba this morning I heard the NPR report on American suit manufacturer Joseph Abboud on the rental car radio. Here is the transcript on the NPR website, titled Suit Maker Goes ‘Lean’ to Keep Jobs in U.S.

Japan Kaikaku Experience Field Report, January 2007

By Jon Miller - January 22nd, 2007

Recap of Our Recent Japan Kaikaku Experience-By Brad Schmidt Toyota’s Innovation: Toyota showcased an impressive update. They’ve introduced full kitting on specific sections of their assembly line. Kit carts follow the car

TPS Kids

By Jon Miller - January 20th, 2007

Modern marketing gurus will tell you that in order to build customer loyalty you need customers to develop a deep, emotional attachment to the brand. One of the ways this is done is by telling engaging stories about the brand. Toyota s

Toyota Owes Grandpa Ford

By Jon Miller - January 19th, 2007

Earlier this month the Lean Insider attempted to answer the question Which Lean Book is Right for My Boss? These folks ought to have the answer, since Productivity Press has published the lion’s share of important books on what w

Why Not Chase the Rabbit?

By Jon Miller - January 17th, 2007

This is a question I have most often heard from European engineers, or from people in other countries who are working with extremely high volume light assembly operations, usually following some teaching about just in time production o

How Can They Not Change?

By Jon Miller - January 16th, 2007

I would like to say thank you to everyone who has been placing advance orders for Taiichi Ohno’s Workplace Management, coming out in March 2007. Here is a sneak preview from the book, a short passage from Chapter 37: Follow the D

Does Lean Manufacturing = The Toyota Production System?

By Jon Miller - January 15th, 2007

There is a very interesting discussion over at the Lean blog today in the post To Merge or Not To Merge…Lean & TPS. There were nine reader comments as of tonight, with many good viewpoints on the question of whether the arti

Giving A Shout Out to a Few Gemba Bloggers

By Jon Miller - January 11th, 2007

I would like to recognize a few fellow bloggers who consistently share genuine events and lessons from Lean manufacturing experiences on their gemba. Mike Wroblewski has promised to return to more active blogging with a post last week.

Words of Taiichi Ohno Sensei, Part 4: It’s a Race to Get People to Think

By Jon Miller - January 10th, 2007

I came across a new quote from Taiichi Ohno recently. It was in Japanese, and may not be new to the world, but I can’t recall seeing it in English before. I think it nicely captures the idea of kaizen and respect for people, whic

When Times Are Tough, Do You Make Better Decisions?

By Jon Miller - January 8th, 2007

I heard this in a meeting today “When times are tough you make better decisions.” I wonder if this is true. They say that necessity is the mother of invention and this means something similar. A common Toyota saying is 「�

Top 5 Lean Manufacturing Books for Beginners

By Jon Miller - January 5th, 2007

From time to time we get e-mails asking for recommendations on books or articles to read for people who are just starting out learning about Lean manufacturing and how the Toyota Production System applies to their business. The reading

Endless Creativity, Inquisitiveness and Pursuit of Improvement

By Jon Miller - January 2nd, 2007

In his New Year’s address Toyota President Katsuaki Watanabe positions 2007 as a foundation building year. He acknowledges both that Toyota sees not only strong growth in demand for their products but also fierce competition. He

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