Ron Pereira, Author at Gemba Academy | Page 2 of 31

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.

751 Articles

The Power of Perception: Transforming Challenges into Opportunities

By Ron Pereira - January 30th, 2024

We’ve all been there – facing those challenging, frustrating, or just plain uncertain moments in our personal and professional lives. Whether it’s a project or kaizen event going awry, a difficult conversation with your a

Thinking in Bets: Embracing Uncertainty and Probabilistic Thinking

By Ron Pereira - January 17th, 2024

I just finished an interesting book titled “Thinking in Bets: Making Smarter Decisions when you Don’t have all the Facts” by Annie Duke, a world champion poker player. There are lots of parallels to Scientific Thinkin

The Six Types of Working Genius: What Makes for a Great Team & Marriage!

By Ron Pereira - February 27th, 2023

Patrick Lencioni, the author of the best-selling book “The Five Dysfunctions of a Team,” has introduced a new concept called the Six Types of Working Genius in the book by the same title. I recently learned about these diff

Building Habits to Support Lean Initiatives: A Guide for Business Leaders

By Ron Pereira - January 31st, 2023

In the world of lean and six sigma, there’s a lot of emphasis placed on the importance of habits and processes. After all, a company’s success depends on the collective actions and habits of its employees. Here are some tip

Have Faith & Trust the Process

By Ron Pereira - April 1st, 2022

My family and I are going through a difficult time right now with a personal situation. Thankfully everyone is healthy…but we have been dealt a blow. After I shared the situation with a close friend, who knows me very well, they

5 Ways to Be More Grateful and Why Lean Thinkers Should Care

By Ron Pereira - March 4th, 2022

“Gratitude is not only the greatest of virtues but the parent of all others.” -Cicero I’ve been thinking about gratefulness a lot lately. Being grateful is something I try to do…but often fail at. There are many

The Continuous Improvement Culture Model

By Ron Pereira - February 4th, 2022

This article was written by John Knotts, a Senior Coach here at Gemba Academy In September, we started our journey of Building a Culture of Continuous Improvement. In that first article, I discussed the concept of my model I use to

Crafting Your Continuous Improvement Strategy

By Ron Pereira - January 7th, 2022

This article was written by John Knotts, a Senior Coach here at Gemba Academy Two months ago, we started our journey on building a culture of continuous improvement. We know that continuous improvement brings many benefits to an organi

Going to Gemba Isn’t Sufficient

By Ron Pereira - November 5th, 2021

As I’ve mentioned before I’m one of several coaches for a high school football team here in Texas. Like just about every other high school football team (and many middle school teams) we film every game and carefully dissec

The Power of Neutral Thinking

By Ron Pereira - October 1st, 2021

“It’s okay to have emotions… just don’t be emotional.” – Russell Wilson One of the great joys of my life has been the ability to coach many of my children’s youth sports teams. It all started b

How to Build a Culture of Continuous Improvement

By Ron Pereira - September 3rd, 2021

This article was written by John Knotts. John recently joined the Gemba Academy team as a Senior Coach of Lean and Six Sigma. A culture of continuous improvement provides any company a significant advantage in the marketplace. But do

what problem are you trying to solve

What Problem Are You Trying to Solve?

By Ron Pereira - July 2nd, 2021

One of my responsibilities here at Gemba Academy is to coach our Black Belt and Master Black Belt candidates. And, without question, the most common question I ask during the project selection phase of the journey is “What proble

What Is Agile Kanban?

By Ron Pereira - May 7th, 2021

We’re excited to announce the release of our initial Introduction to Agile Kanban course. We have several more Agile Kanban related courses in the works but decided to release this first course now. What follows is the text from

The Dichotomy of Continuous Improvement

By Ron Pereira - April 2nd, 2021

Every weekday morning my 14-year-old son and I take the 25-minute drive to his school. Neither one of us are big talkers in the morning so we typically listen to audiobooks to pass the time. The topics of the books we’ve listened

Lessons Learned From a Flooded Office

By Ron Pereira - March 5th, 2021

As I pulled into the Gemba Academy parking lot Thursday morning, February 18th, I noticed something strange…there was ice everywhere. Now, as you may have heard, Texas was recently blasted with some crazy cold temperatures which

Lean Thinking: A Flashlight, Mirror, and Sandpaper

By Ron Pereira - February 5th, 2021

I’ve been following “The Bible in a Year” podcast that’s hosted by Fr. Mike Schmitz. It’s wonderfully done for anyone interested in covering the entire bible in a year. During one of the recent episodes

bridge builder

What is the Biggest Truth in Life?

By Ron Pereira - December 4th, 2020

Earlier this week one of my podcast guests turned the tables and asked me a few questions. I was fully prepared for a few traditional continuous improvement themed questions but, as it turns out, the first question, in particular, was

The Winning Link with Billy Taylor

By Ron Pereira - November 6th, 2020

Gemba Academy is entering the “live stream” movement. We’ve obviously had some experience with video based learning over the years and we’ve also done many webinars which, technically, is a streaming event. Bu

Activity over Results

Focus on What you Plan to Do (Not What You Want to Get Done)

By Ron Pereira - October 2nd, 2020

Yesterday, during a coaching call with Allen, one of our Black Belt candidates, I had an interesting conversation. Allen asked how to best plan out the next 5 business days and if I had any recommendations on what he should get done.

What Is a Transactional Value Stream Map?

By Ron Pereira - September 4th, 2020

We’ve recently released “phase 1” of a new Business Process Mapping series. Two additional phases will be added in the coming weeks. In phase 1 we explore the topic of transactional value stream mapping. In this

What Is a Lean Daily Management System?

By Ron Pereira - August 7th, 2020

If you’ve been practicing lean for any amount of time you’ve likely heard about gemba walks, leader standard work, and obeya. To be sure, as individual lean tools and concepts they’re powerful. But, when you combine

Measurement System & Sampling Horror Stories

By Ron Pereira - July 17th, 2020

Yesterday, during our weekly Black Belt coaching call I was talking to my friend Joni (hope it’s ok to mention you, Joni!) about the importance of sampling and measurement systems. As some folks know – especially those I

Strengthening the Base

By Ron Pereira - June 5th, 2020

As the world continues to work through Covid-19 much has been written about prevention. There are many preventive guidelines recommended by various health organizations and I’m sure you know them all by heart now. But thereR

What Are Hypothesis Tests and Why Should We Care? – Coronavirus Edition

By Ron Pereira - May 1st, 2020

As more and more medical studies related to potential Covid-19 treatments are released in the coming days, weeks, and months, you’re sure to hear terms like “significance” and “P-values” mentioned many tim

How to Manage Chaos & Uncertainty

By Ron Pereira - April 3rd, 2020

One of the most efficient ways to work through an obstacle, or uncertainty, is to learn as fast as possible through experimentation. I think it’s safe to say that most of us have been facing lots of change and uncertainty over the la

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