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Ron Pereira

Ron has more than 20 years of experience in various manufacturing, supply chain, and senior leadership roles. Ron has held the titles of process engineer, engineering manager, master black belt, and director of manufacturing & continuous improvement. In 2002 Ron was the first American to win the Nokia Global Six Sigma and Overall Quality award in Helsinki, Finland. Ron holds a bachelor's degree in automated manufacturing and an MBA in technology management.

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759 Articles

There’s Nothing Fantastic About Being Good

By Ron Pereira - September 14th, 2010

I was recently flipping through one of my favorite lean books of all time, Taiichi Ohno’s Workplace Management. I often grab this book, open it up, and randomly read a page much like I do with the Bible. You see, for me, as with the

Preparing Coffee

By Ron Pereira - September 9th, 2010

Last night, before I went to bed, I set my coffee maker up to start brewing at 5:45 AM.  I also placed my coffee mug and a spoon next to the coffee maker so I wouldn’t have to fumble about in the morning. This morning, around 6

A Day that Changed My Life Forever

By Ron Pereira - September 7th, 2010

It was early evening – around 7:00 PM. I was leaving the plant I was visiting that week and noticed a second shift operator preparing to start his day. I went over to say hi to the young man. He was a nice fellow… he had one of

The Don’t Quit Poem

By Ron Pereira - September 3rd, 2010

I absolutely love this.  Enjoy.  Oh, and if you’re reading this on an iPhone or via RSS reader/email you’ll likely need to click through to the site.

Who’s Winning?

By Ron Pereira - September 2nd, 2010

I recently had the pleasure of having lunch with Rick Foreman. Rick frequently comments on this blog and many others. Rick is also extremely passionate about lean… he’s the sort of fellow that gets you all pumped up and ready to ma

A Major Announcement That You’ve Made Possible

By Ron Pereira - August 30th, 2010

My life changed – more than I could have ever imagined – Sunday evening, January 14, 2007. You see it was on this day that I wrote my first blog article. I remember wondering if anyone would read it? I actually just re-read

How I Sustain a Clean PC Desktop

By Ron Pereira - August 27th, 2010

Have you ever heard the stories of how the air conditioning repair man often has air conditioning problems at home? Or how the plumber’s wife is constantly after him to fix the leak under the sink? Well, I can relate. You see, if

Lean Blogging – There’s an app for that!

By Ron Pereira - August 24th, 2010

If you are an iPhone user you’re going to want to download the 100% free Lean Daily app. It’s extremely cool as it consolidates the latest posts from your favorite lean blogs into one convenient app. Here is a summary of th

Whom shall we serve?

By Ron Pereira - August 18th, 2010

Lot, a reader of LSS Academy, recently sent the following question in. “We are actually starting lean six sigma in our bank and I am in charge of the central processing unit of the HO. I am getting a bit confused as to who I shou

5S or 6S… which should it be?

By Ron Pereira - August 4th, 2010

I was recently asked the following question by a continuous improvement practitioner: “Should we make safety the 6th S, thus calling it 6S instead of 5S?” I offered my two cents but rather than sharing my thoughts at this time I am

Gettin’ Jiggy With It

By Ron Pereira - August 2nd, 2010

I’ve been doing a tremendous amount of classroom training the last few weeks. To be more precise, over the last 14 days I’ve taught more than 40 people everything from hypothesis testing to the different types of pull systems used

What Motivates?

By Ron Pereira - July 23rd, 2010

If you are reading this via email or RSS, you may need to click through to the website to see the video.

How to Determine Cycle Time, Takt Time, Lead Time

By Ron Pereira - July 20th, 2010

Vaibhav, a reader of Gemba Academy’s blog, emailed us the following question. Can you please help me understand the definitions for the following terms? Cycle Time Manufacturing Lead Time TAKT Time Inventory Turns Your help to c

Multiple Grey spheres with one red sphere in the cluster representing an abnormality

5S Isn’t About Cleaning, Straightening, or Standardization

By Ron Pereira - July 19th, 2010

Quick question for you… what’s the true purpose of 5S (or 6S)? Go ahead and answer in your head or out loud. Now, if you’re close enough to some colleagues ask them the same question. Go on, I’ll wait. Great. Now that we have s

Free 7 Quality Control Tools Overview Training Video

By Ron Pereira - July 1st, 2010

Quality control can take a lifetime of learning to master, but Gemba Academy is here to help you get started with our free 7 quality control tools overview training video. Contrary to what some think, lean-thinking companies are very c

5 Ways to Improve Your Teaching Skills

By Ron Pereira - June 28th, 2010

Have you ever been forced to listen to a monotone, boring, and oh so irritating instructor teach a class? I’m guessing most of you are nodding your head up and down. Well I have and can tell you one thing… it hurts. A lot! But it d

How to Radically Increase Personal Productivity

By Ron Pereira - June 9th, 2010

Think back to the last meeting you attended. How many people were there? How long was the meeting? Let’s assume – for sake of example – that there were 8 people in your meeting. Let’s also assume the meeting lasted 1 hour. This

Jim Joyce and Accountability

By Ron Pereira - June 4th, 2010

As those that follow Major League Baseball know, umpire Jim Joyce cost pitcher Armando Galarraga a perfect game earlier this week. For those that don’t know the story, Detroit Tiger pitcher Armando Galarraga needed one more out in or

3 Practical Ways to Immediately Reduce Costs

By Ron Pereira - June 1st, 2010

No matter if business is good or bad one thing is for certain… you, and those you work with, should be laser focused on cost reduction. Now be honest, when you read the words cost reduction was the first thing that popped into your m

The Most Important Aspect of Kaizen

By Ron Pereira - May 20th, 2010

I recently facilitated a SMED kaizen event. Over the years I’ve been fortunate enough to facilitate events all over the world. But this event was different. Very different. You see this kaizen event was in France and short of two tea

The Most Important Muda Walk

By Ron Pereira - May 19th, 2010

We lean advocates often talk about going to gemba, or the place the work is done, in order to see what is actually happening. We also refer to the process of walking in order to seek out waste as going on a muda walk. Muda, for those t

3 Tips for Continuous Improvement Success

By Ron Pereira - May 10th, 2010

I recently wrote about the Long and Winding Road of P90X and Continuous Improvement. In this article I want to share some ideas for how to approach things such as workout programs and continuous improvement as they are surprisingly sim

The Long and Winding Road

By Ron Pereira - May 3rd, 2010

As I come up on the 90th day of my P90X workout program I can’t help but compare the situation to the continuous improvement journey. You see, by definition, the P90X program is meant to get you into top shape within 90 days. And, le

How to Calculate Process Cycle Efficiency

By Ron Pereira - April 15th, 2010

We’ve received several questions related to how to calculate Process Cycle Efficiency (PCE) over on our most popular blog article of all time: How to Create a Current State Value Stream Map. And while I have written on this PCE t

What do you think of this picture?

By Ron Pereira - April 15th, 2010

My family and I recently took a road trip.  During a stop at a restaurant I came across this sign in the restroom (click picture to enlarge it). I’m curious to hear your thoughts on whether you think this is a weak or strong con

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