Kevin Meyer, Author at Gemba Academy

Kevin Meyer

Kevin has over 35 years of manufacturing leadership experience in the automotive lighting, telecom electronics, and medical device industries. He has been responsible for lean transformations at Sylvania, Abbott Laboratories, Newport Corporation, and most recently as President of Specialty Silicone Fabricators. He guest lectures on business, manufacturing, and leadership topics at his alma mater Rensselaer as well as CalPoly.

101 Articles

The Importance of Respect for People in Problem-Solving

By Kevin Meyer - April 13th, 2018

Respect for people is one of the two core pillars of lean, if not the most important. We talk and write about it a lot, and it is a significant component of Gemba Academy’s online lean training programs. When respect for people i

The Critical Thinking Value of Writing

By Kevin Meyer - February 9th, 2018

Almost three years ago I wrote about the power of writing – by hand. Sure, it’s easy to take notes on an iPad app or on a laptop, but the result is not nearly as beneficial as writing by hand. One of the studies I cited com

Lessons from Perfecting the Pour Over

By Kevin Meyer - January 12th, 2018

For years my wife and I had been fans of our Keurig. Pop in a pod and in a minute you had a decent cup of coffee. Simple, clean, and seemingly “lean” since the process was optimized with very little waste. That change

Preparing for Reflection

By Kevin Meyer - December 8th, 2017

“We do not learn from experience… we learn from reflecting on experience.” – John Dewey I’ve written before about how I’ve worked hard to develop a practice of reflection… daily, monthly, and a

The Multi-Faceted Power of Walking

By Kevin Meyer - November 10th, 2017

Walking is man’s best medicine. – Hippocrates Walking has become a much larger part of my life over the past few years. It started when I embraced kinhin – walking meditation. Walking slowly on the beach for an ho

From Linear to Roundabout Thinking

By Kevin Meyer - October 13th, 2017

Ever since I visited Italy over a decade ago my inner geek has had a fascination with traffic engineering. If you’ve visited Italy, or many similar places, you probably know why. Traffic appears chaotic, thanks in part to wha

Monuments to the Lean Journey

By Kevin Meyer - September 1st, 2017

Nearly two decades ago I had left the medical device industry to jump into telecom photonics equipment. My team was responsible for the operations side of a facility that was a recently-acquired startup in the space, with a product t

Walking (and Swimming, Biking, Running) the Talk

By Kevin Meyer - August 11th, 2017

Many of you know Paul Akers of Fastcap. He’s a very passionate lean practitioner, and Gemba Academy has several videos where we talk to him and tour his company. Almost two years ago I was talking to him and he told me how he,

Combating Shallow Information with Page-Turning Statistics

By Kevin Meyer - July 14th, 2017

Over the past decade or two I’ve become very aware of the importance of depth of knowledge, and how technology has changed our ability to obtain that depth. Reading books and newspaper articles has been replaced with news sound

Scalable Learning, with a Lean Twist

By Kevin Meyer - June 16th, 2017

Last week John Haley and John Brown penned an interesting piece in the Harvard Business Review titled Great Businesses Scale Their Learning, Not Just Their Operations. They began with a bit of history on how scalable efficiency used

Waste Whack-a-Mole

By Kevin Meyer - May 19th, 2017

Today is garbage day in my neighborhood, and like most people in California and probably most of the U.S. if not the world, our trash is neatly segregated into green, blue, and gray containers for pickup – yard waste, recyclables

New Videos: TWI Summit 2017

By Kevin Meyer - May 10th, 2017

Gemba Academy has just released a new Gemba Academy Live! series with the videos from the 2017 TWI Summit that was held in San Diego. In these videos you’ll see Roger Bilas discuss TWI and brain science, learn how TWI can used

New Videos: Practical Problem Solving in Spanish

By Kevin Meyer - May 10th, 2017

We just released our fifth course in the School of Lean in Spanish, Practical Problem Solving. Going beyond Spanish subtitles, which are already available on all School of Lean and School of Six Sigma courses, these new courses use n

Ensconcing Paranoia in Rules

By Kevin Meyer - April 21st, 2017

Silly boy you got so much to live for So much to aim for, so much to try for You blow it all with, paranoia You’re so insecure you, self-destroyer paranoia, they destroy ya It’s been over a week since the United incident wh

A Painful Perpective from the Goofy Foot Pop Up

By Kevin Meyer - March 17th, 2017

For the past couple years I’ve worked hard at getting into the best shape I’ve been in in decades. In fact, many of us at Gemba Academy have, and we have a wellness program that encourages and rewards positive efforts tow

Mother Nature Takes On the Lean Home

By Kevin Meyer - February 10th, 2017

A few months ago I told you how my wife and I had found a mid-century remodel project only a couple blocks away from where we currently live. We wanted to create a “lean home” – smaller with a simple layout, less st

A Time to Read and Reflect

By Kevin Meyer - January 13th, 2017

It’s that time of the year when we reflect on the past and plan for the future. An arbitrary time, which has always bothered me. We should really be doing this in a continual fashion. I try, with daily, monthly, and quarter

Introduction to Lean Manufacturing Spanish Español

New Videos: Lean Introductory Topics in Spanish

By Kevin Meyer - December 6th, 2016

We just released our fourth course in the School of Lean in Spanish, Introductory Topics. Going beyond Spanish subtitles, which are already available on all School of Lean and School of Six Sigma courses, these new courses use native

A Change of Pace

By Kevin Meyer - December 2nd, 2016

One of my favorite habits is a nice slow kinhin – walking meditation – on the beach a couple blocks from my house. One step per breath, slow and deliberate. It’s amazing what you notice – both about your surroundings and your

New Videos: Transforming Your Value Streams in Spanish

By Kevin Meyer - November 14th, 2016

We just released our third course in the School of Lean in Spanish, Transforming Your Value Streams. Going beyond Spanish subtitles, which are already available on all School of Lean and School of Six Sigma courses, these new courses u

The Pursuit of Perfection

By Kevin Meyer - November 11th, 2016

Five months ago I called my painter, who happens to live all of three doors away, to see if he had time to do some touchup on the house. He was able to fit me into his schedule starting a couple weeks ago. I knew I was going to ha

New Videos: Workplace Visualization Course

By Kevin Meyer - November 1st, 2016

In this new School of Lean course we explore what visualization is and why it’s such an important aspect of lean management. Also, we will discover how to go about bringing the concept of visuality to the workplace. Finally, we&#

New Videos: Lean at the City of Grand Rapids

By Kevin Meyer - October 20th, 2016

Steve Kane, Director of Customer Success at Gemba Academy, visits a Gemba Academy customer, the City of Grand Rapids, Michigan. Steve had the opportunity to talk with decision makers, city executives, as well as as other city employees

Designing a Lean Home

By Kevin Meyer - October 14th, 2016

I’ve received several comments on The Simple Leader, with some of the most unexpected having to do with the section where I discuss my desire to design and build a home with Lean principles in mind. If I hadn’t studied chem

New Gemba Academy Videos: Seven Wastes in Spanish

By Kevin Meyer - September 13th, 2016

We recently announced the launch of Gemba Academy Español. We began with 5S and now we are very excited to announce the release of the next course, The Seven Deadly Wastes (Los 7 Desperdicios de la Producción)! As a reminder, anyo

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