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Ron Pereira

Ron Pereira is a co-founder and the Managing Director of Gemba Academy and has more than 30 years of experience helping organizations improve performance through Lean, Six Sigma, and continuous improvement. Prior to starting Gemba Academy, Ron served in a variety of manufacturing, supply chain, and leadership roles, including process engineer, engineering manager, Master Black Belt, and director of manufacturing and continuous improvement. Today, Ron works with leaders around the world to develop problem-solving capabilities, strengthen leadership, and build cultures where continuous improvement thrives. Through his writing, podcast interviews, and educational programs, he shares practical insights that help organizations achieve lasting operational excellence.

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758 Articles

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

LSS Academy Now on LinkedIn

By Ron Pereira - April 12th, 2010

I’m happy to announce that LSS Academy is now on LinkedIn. We’ll obviously continue to roll strong here on the blog… but there seems to be something something special about LinkedIn when it comes to generating buzz ab

Vague Instructions and Counting

By Ron Pereira - April 7th, 2010

On Monday I wrote a fun little article asking the fine readers of LSS Academy if they could count! Of course this was all done in fun… as I know you can all count. But, as many of you pointed out, there were several lessons to be lea

Can you count? Are you sure?

By Ron Pereira - April 5th, 2010

If you’ve ever gone through some form of continuous improvement training you may have done this little experiment. But in case you haven’t, I’d like to challenge you to count the number of times the letter “F

I Presently Struggle With

By Ron Pereira - March 29th, 2010

One of my favorite quotes from the P90X training videos goes like this. “If you can eliminate the mindset that ‘I can’t. I can’t do pull ups.’ Forget I can’t – say ‘I presently struggle with’ and if you keep that

No Money in Muda!

By Ron Pereira - March 15th, 2010

We’re finishing up the final touches on a new course over at Gemba Academy called “Lean Lingo Explained.” In this course Brad Schmidt, the managing partner of Gemba Japan, explains what several lean terms mean in grea

Who will you hire?

By Ron Pereira - March 10th, 2010

Which do you feel is more important – hard work and hustle or brains and intelligence? In other words, if you had to choose between the following two people to run your family business… who would it be? Person 1: Average intell

Lean Leaders, circa 2020

By Ron Pereira - March 7th, 2010

Guest Post by Michael Lombard of the Lean Builder Blog Have you seen any of Conan O’Brien’s “In the Year 2000” skits? They were funny when he started doing them way back in the 90’s, and were even funnier when he kept doing t

The Goal: A 2 Second Improvement Each Day

By Ron Pereira - March 4th, 2010

Another hat tip to Jon Miller for first posting this video of Paul Akers and the FastCap team practicing lean thinking. What you think of this process? Do you do something similar at your place of work?

Lean in Hospitals: Running Free vs. Coordinated Efforts

By Ron Pereira - March 3rd, 2010

Guest Post by Alicia C. Simmer of KHC There’s a choice to be made in how hospital leaders approach implementing lean: either let lean run free or force lean efforts to be coordinated. Running Free In the ‘running free’ approach,

The Lean US Senator Preaches the Gospel that is Lean on Fox News!

By Ron Pereira - February 26th, 2010

Hat tip to Jon Miller for first posting this video of Paul Akers preaching lean on Fox News.  Yes, preaching lean on the most watched news station in the free world – Fox News. Check it out for yourself!!!

3 Life Lessons P90X Has Taught Me

By Ron Pereira - February 25th, 2010

I awake to the sound of my iPhone alarm clock ringing. It’s 5:15 AM. Are you kidding me? I lay there for about a minute. Then, my dog Lexi, who is 15 years old and losing her mind, comes to my side of the bed and begins her ritualist

5 Questions to Ask Before You Attempt to Implement Kanban

By Ron Pereira - February 18th, 2010

My first manufacturing experiences were with two different multi-billion dollar manufacturing companies who happened to run massive ERP systems meaning we had massive MRP systems running the shop floor.  Sound familiar? Anyhow, as a y

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