Jon Miller, Author at Gemba Academy

Jon Miller

Jon has dedicated his 25+ year career to the field of kaizen, continuous improvement, and lean management. Jon spent the first eighteen years of his life in Japan, then graduated from McGill University with a bachelor’s in linguistics.

1485 Articles

Akio Toyoda’s Take on TPS

By Jon Miller - August 31st, 2020

One might think that Toyota, after more than fifty years of developing, working within, and refining the Toyota Production System, wouldn’t need to run training courses on TPS for managers. And yet recently Toyota has started a s

Repainting the Wood Steps of Lean Transformation

By Jon Miller - August 17th, 2020

Summer is a great time for home improvement projects. This week I crossed off another one off of my list. The paint on one of the back staircases was worn and peeling. It was in dire in need of repair. At five feet wide, three feet tal

Better Business Processes through ECRSA

By Jon Miller - August 10th, 2020

I came across my old friend Ecrsa while working on some teaching videos for our Business Process Mapping. She’s actually an industrial engineering acronym, ECRS. It stands for Eliminate, Combine, Rearrange, Simplify, with the a

What’s in the Continuous Improvement Attic?

By Jon Miller - August 3rd, 2020

Whether we’re talking about houses, management systems, or vacation plans, it’s almost always a good idea to build from the foundation up. Even when we think we already have a firm foundation, it’s worth checking befo

Where to Start with the Daily Management System?

By Jon Miller - July 27th, 2020

Where do we start? This is one of the most common questions people ask throughout the continuous improvement journey. This is true not only at the very beginning but also at various stages. The word “continuous” is misleadi

How to Think about Zero

By Jon Miller - July 20th, 2020

For the past few months, businesses have grappled with the question of how to operate without its employees, customers and suppliers breathing the same air. As we enter the summer, professional sports leagues must figure out how it wil

5S and Five More Working from Home Hacks

By Jon Miller - July 13th, 2020

For many knowledge workers it looks like working from home may be here to stay for a while. Some have found that working from home has improved productivity, due to time saved not commuting or other reasons. For others, the home enviro

Six-Month Reflection Questions, Adjusted

By Jon Miller - June 29th, 2020

I’m in the habit of looking back every six months, asking myself a few questions, and setting intentions for the future. In Lean terminology this is known as reflection, or hansei. January through June 2020 will go down in histor

Better Problem Solving with Empathy Maps

By Jon Miller - June 22nd, 2020

Maybe things have always been this way. But it seems like we are increasingly shouting at each other rather than working things out. How should we respond to a pandemic? How can we revive the economy? What to do about police brutality?

Towards Non-scale Management

By Jon Miller - June 15th, 2020

People think Taiichi Ohno’s book Toyota Production is about TPS. It’s not. It’s even arguable whether he ever envisioned the Toyota method as a system or set out to build one. There is no native word in Japanese for &

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