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

When Customer-Supplier Partnerships… Aren’t

By Kevin Meyer - July 3rd, 2020

Many years ago I wrote about how many companies were trying to get a one-time boost in working capital by extending their purchasing terms from typical net-30 to net-90 and even net-120. In some cases they were even partnering with b

Metrics from the Perspective of the Customer

By Kevin Meyer - May 8th, 2020

A core concept of lean is that value is defined from the perspective of the customer, and therefore waste is as well. We are familiar with both types of muda, waste that is unnecessary and must be removed and waste that is necessary

Restart to a Future State, Not the Previous State

By Kevin Meyer - April 10th, 2020

One of my favorite books is Essentialism: The Disciplined Pursuit of Less by Greg McKeown. When I first read his book several years ago it put a new spin on lean’s perspective on waste and value by applying similar concepts to

Deepening the Lessons of Crisis

By Kevin Meyer - March 6th, 2020

I’m sure all of us are paying close attention to the evolving coronavirus (COVID-19) situation and thinking about how it has and will affect our families, organizations, and society. It’s too soon to say whether this will

Medical interns at hospital with patient

Leverage Learning Environments to Create Customer Value

By Kevin Meyer - February 14th, 2020

A couple weeks ago a consultant friend of mine, who coincidentally focuses his practice on lean in healthcare, was complaining about issues with his healthcare providers. It’s a story we hear often – doctors running late,

Refining and Reinforcing Principles

By Kevin Meyer - January 10th, 2020

Earlier this month Ron discussed his top ten lessons from the last decade and Jon what he believes is the most important word of the year (“daily”). Although I have tried to divorce myself from the arbitrary boundaries of

Empirical Evidence for the Power of Kata

By Kevin Meyer - December 13th, 2019

We’ve long known that embracing failure with an aim toward learning and improvement can create future success. Organizations that see failure in that light, and support their people with cultures and systems to learn from failu

Question Yourself

By Kevin Meyer - November 8th, 2019

One of my favorite websites, Brain Pickings, recently turned 13. The reason it’s a favorite is because it offers content that is challenging intellectually – but not to the point of not making sense to humble minds like min

The Wisdom of Humility

By Kevin Meyer - October 11th, 2019

Lately I’ve been reflecting 0n the impact of mistakes on leadership, and how important humility becomes to learning from those mistakes. An article in The Washington Post this week describing the humility of Dr. James Peebles,

Oh, the Mistakes I’ve Made…

By Kevin Meyer - September 13th, 2019

Lately we’ve witnessed what happens when leaders don’t have the emotional intelligence to admit to even the smallest and most originally inconsequential mistakes. This has caused me to reflect on some of mine over the pas

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