Ron Pereira, Author at Gemba Academy

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.

759 Articles

It’s a Girl!

By Ron Pereira - July 27th, 2008

“Children too are a gift from the LORD, the fruit of the womb, a reward.” ~Psalm 127:3 Yesterday my family was blessed with the arrival of our 4th child, a baby girl. While the births of all my children have been amazing, this one

Alice in Chains and The Soft Zone

By Ron Pereira - July 22nd, 2008

A few weeks ago I was hanging out with some of my neighbors. The kids were playing, the wives were talking, and the men were drinking a few beers while playing the bean bag game. You know the one… where you try to toss bean bags onto

Should we Keep to the Middle?

By Ron Pereira - July 20th, 2008

Here’s a list of principles worthy of our attention as we start the week. Carefully observe oneself and one’s situation, carefully observe others, and carefully observe one’s environment. Seize the initiative in whatever you unde

Laying the Foundation: Part 2

By Ron Pereira - July 15th, 2008

Tonight we’ll wrap up our series on how to lay down a strong foundation such that your continuous improvement initiatives not only survive… but flourish. In part 1 of the series we talked about creating tension, ensuring our effort

Laying the Foundation: Part 1

By Ron Pereira - July 14th, 2008

Tonight, I’d like to share some tips for how we might all go about laying down a rock solid foundation in an effort to ensure our continuous improvement bear real fruit. The most obvious foundational tip I can offer is to respect peo

Planting Seeds

By Ron Pereira - July 13th, 2008

What can we learn about continuous improvement from the person Christian’s call the King of King’s, Lord of Lord’s, and The Great I AM? Lots. Let’s start in the book of Matthew. And he spoke to them at length in parable

Is Batching Always Bad?

By Ron Pereira - July 9th, 2008

I was recently skimming the archives of one of my favorite “blogging” blogs – Problogger – when I read something that stopped me dead in my tracks. The thing that slammed me into this proverbial brick wall was an article titled

Less Talking, More Action

By Ron Pereira - July 8th, 2008

“Too many words. Let them just see what we do.” -Blessed Mother Teresa This is an odd quote for a blog that primarily depends on the written word in order to communicate. With this in mind, I’ll keep this post short and sweet. In

The Art of Instruction

By Ron Pereira - July 7th, 2008

“I never teach my pupils; I only attempt to provide the conditions in which they can learn.” ~Albert Einstein Last night we discussed two different learning theories – entity and incremental. I read about these theories i

Two Approaches to Learning

By Ron Pereira - July 6th, 2008

Have you ever watched the movie Searching for Bobby Fisher? It’s the one about the child prodigy chess player. Well the child, Josh Waitzkin, is all grown up now and has written a book called The Art of Learning. I am not done with t

Happy 4th of July!

By Ron Pereira - July 4th, 2008

“Freedom has its life in the hearts, the actions, the spirit of men and so it must be daily earned and refreshed – else like a flower cut from its life-giving roots, it will wither and die.” ~Dwight D. Eisenhower A me

The Ultimate Productivity System: Zen to Done

By Ron Pereira - July 2nd, 2008

Leo Babauta is the founder of one of the most popular blogs around called Zen Habits (almost 60,000 subscribers as of this article). While he doesn’t write about lean manufacturing, per se, he does touch on many lean philosophies lik

Turn off the Lights

By Ron Pereira - July 1st, 2008

Walmart is in the news with their new logo. Something that isn’t getting as much press is a new thing Walmart is also beginning to do in their stores… turn off the lights. Where are the waffles? I was recently in my local

Ban the Stop Watch!

By Ron Pereira - June 30th, 2008

Allow me to introduce Joe, the plant Industrial Engineer. Joe is a nice boy fresh out of college. On this particular day old Joe comes popping out of his cubicle in his Dockers and white polo shirt holding a clip board and stop watch.

The Spiritual Side of Continuous Improvement

By Ron Pereira - June 26th, 2008

I’m exhausted – both physically and mentally. For the past 5 days I’ve been involved in an extremely intense kaizen. One could even call it a kaikaku – or radical change event. I’ve coached, learned, cleaned, painted, and swe

What is Value?

By Ron Pereira - June 20th, 2008

“Above all, lean practitioners must be relentlessly focused on the customer when specifying and creating value.” -Womack & Jones, Lean Thinking I love Seth Godin’s blog. He has written some amazing posts over the year

5 Steps to Developing a Tiger Like Attitude

By Ron Pereira - June 17th, 2008

“Nothing can stop the man with the right mental attitude from achieving his goal; nothing on earth can help the man with the wrong mental attitude.” -Thomas Jefferson Since watching and reading about the greatness that is T

Management Improvement Carnival #37

By Ron Pereira - June 15th, 2008

Once again, I have the privilege of hosting the latest edition of the Management Improvement Carnival. So without further delay here are some of my favorite posts from around the blogosphere over the last 30 days or so. Are we Cowboys

5 Steps to Developing a Thinking Organization

By Ron Pereira - June 11th, 2008

Scott recently asked: Ron, you mention “thinking production system” instead of Toyota. How do you learn to “think” better? What’s your recommendation for that? I agree with your premise but in my experience, learning to think

Strategies to Sustain Operations Excellence

By Ron Pereira - June 9th, 2008

This is an abridged version of a presentation I recently gave at a manufacturing excellence conference. If you’d like to download the video follow this link to Google Video and click on download video.

Entropy, Salmon, and Swimming

By Ron Pereira - June 4th, 2008

A can of soup falls if you drop it, your car tire blows out when a nail punctures it, and eventually my barbeque grill cools down after grilling steaks, even in the hot Texas air. Why is this? Allow me to explain. While these things ar

Eight Reasons Your Lean/Six Sigma Initiative Could Fail

By Ron Pereira - June 1st, 2008

Launching a Lean or Six Sigma initiative signals a move towards operational excellence and a dedication to continuous improvement. Yet, navigating this journey successfully requires awareness of certain critical challenges that are oft

Conference Calls, Kids, and SMED

By Ron Pereira - May 30th, 2008

My wife is out of town to visit some relatives which means it’s me and my three kiddos for the weekend. Here is the sticky part. I had to arrange an important conference call today and was totally stressing out on how I was going to

8 Dimensions of Quality

By Ron Pereira - May 28th, 2008

The definition of quality is often a hotly debated topic. While it may seem intuitive, when we get right down to it, “quality” is a difficult concept to define with any precision. The most fundamental definition of a quality produc

A Lesson in Courage

By Ron Pereira - May 27th, 2008

“Without courage, wisdom bears no fruit.” -Baltasar Gracian Family Vacation Over the Memorial Day weekend my family and I went on a much needed vacation. We normally go to Sea World each summer, but since my wife is almost 8 month

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