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

Continuous Improvement Begins with You!

By Ron Pereira - December 5th, 2007

One of the things that drives me batty is how hard some people make continuous improvement. Some think you have to go to 2 or 4 weeks of training to make something better. Some think if you don’t have a green or black belt you are no

No Standards No Kaizen

By Ron Pereira - December 3rd, 2007

I don’t know the exact quote and I am 38,000 feet in the air (I am flying home from London) so I can’t look it up… but Taiichi Ohno once said something like, “Without standards there can be no kaizen.” What does this mean? We

I am Addicted to Kaizen

By Ron Pereira - November 29th, 2007

Hi, my name is Ron and I am addicted to kaizen. I was first introduced to kaizen years ago and while I did like it I didn’t go overboard. I worked on a few point kaizen events but never really accomplished more than some nice

Back from the Big House

By Ron Pereira - November 18th, 2007

Let me just say this past weekend rocked! As regular readers of the blog know I attended the Ohio State versus Michigan football game this past Saturday. Well my Buckeyes handled Michigan with ease and won the Big Ten championship.

Two Types of Kaizen

By Ron Pereira - October 28th, 2007

The word kaizen is fast becoming a buzz word galore. You will hear about how people are “doing kaizen” or running a big “kaizen event” next week. Many times folks are in fact executing kaizen’s in an att

The Right Inventory is an Asset!

By Ron Pereira - October 19th, 2007

Most lean practitioners, myself included, spend lots of time talking about how calling inventory an asset is hog wash. We use analogies like how lowering inventory is the same as lowering water in a river… eventually all those

Six Characteristics of a Lean Leader

By Ron Pereira - October 3rd, 2007

There are a plethora of books on leadership. I have read many such books and seem to gain something from each of them. I don’t always agree with the authors but in the end I feel better for studying these folks. But, if I were to

Who is your mentor?

By Ron Pereira - October 1st, 2007

No matter what you do for a living or your vocation in life I believe it is essential to have a mentor… or even better mentors. Paging Jory Around 13 years ago, I began my professional career after college working at Motorola

Why Flow Counter Clockwise?

By Ron Pereira - September 30th, 2007

When designing a u-shaped cell it is often recommened that material flow in a counter clockwise direction. Why is this? It’s about the right hand Research shows that most people are right handed. I have heard that as many as 85%

Liquor Stores and Churches

By Ron Pereira - September 27th, 2007

They say there are lies, damn lies, and statistics. Here’s an example of why this is sadly true in many cases. It’s been proven that there is a strong correlation between the number of churches and liquor stores in a commun

The Bridge Builder

By Ron Pereira - September 25th, 2007

I recently heard this poem. While I am not a big poem kind of fellow I must admit this one resonated with me. It summarizes why I love what I do… which is to find better ways to do things better. Put another way my goal in

A New Lean Metric: ROI LT

By Ron Pereira - September 23rd, 2007

When teaching value stream mapping one of the hardest metrics for people to grasp is production lead time (PLT) which is also commonly referred to as throughput time. Here is a quick summary of how PLT works. Say there are 3 proces

Where is Ron?

By Ron Pereira - September 20th, 2007

Hello from London, England. I wanted to drop a line and apologize for my lack of blogging action! I have been extremely busy as of late and thus my blogging has taken a bit of a hit. I typically post my blogs in the evenings but

Calculating Rolled Throughput Yield (RTY)

By Ron Pereira - September 12th, 2007

One of the most powerful operational metrics I know of is Rolled Throughput Yield (RTY). It’s used to assess the “true” yield of a given process. This includes what we often call the “hidden factory” t

Six Sigma in Japan

By Ron Pereira - September 9th, 2007

Here is a question I honestly don’t know the answer to. Do companies in Japan use Six Sigma? When I say Six Sigma I am referring to someone following the standard DMAIC roadmap in attempts to reduce variation, defects, etc.

Humility

By Ron Pereira - September 6th, 2007

This past Sunday the readings for Roman Catholics around the world centered on the theme of humilty. The pastor of my parish gave an excellent homily on the topic and I wanted to share some of my own thoughts as it relates to the those

Management Improvement Carnival #18

By Ron Pereira - September 2nd, 2007

The Management Improvement Carnival is one of my favorite aspects of John Hunter’s Curious Cat blog. John asked me to host the carnival this month and I gladly accepted. So without further delay here are some of my favorite

Game on!

By Ron Pereira - August 31st, 2007

I grew up watching Ohio State play football. I suppose I was watching them play as a young boy in Greenville, Ohio before I even knew what football was. My mom once told me, “You can take the boy out of Ohio (I live in Texas now), bu

Fun with Confidence Intervals – Part 2

By Ron Pereira - August 30th, 2007

Last night we began our discussion on confidence intervals. Specifically, we talked about the difference between population and sample parameters and how they play a major role in understanding what a confidence interval is. Tonight I

Fun with Confidence Intervals – Part 1

By Ron Pereira - August 29th, 2007

If I said the words “confidence intervals” would you know what I meant? What if I also asked if you could calculate them? If you answered no to either one of these questions I assure you will be able to answer yes by end of this tw

5 Decision Making Styles

By Ron Pereira - August 28th, 2007

Let’s suppose you are a parent and decide to ask your kids to help you make an important family decision. After careful consideration your kids share their thoughts with you only to learn the decision had already been made and

Increasing Return on Net Assets (RONA) with Lean & Six Sigma

By Ron Pereira - August 27th, 2007

The business metric RONA (Return on Net Assets) is used by many companies in order to gauge how well they turn their assets into income. I am no accountant but do know there are a few ways to calculate RONA. For the sake of this arti

Lean Sushi

By Ron Pereira - August 26th, 2007

I came across a fun story of how a sushi shop uses lean principles to its advantage. Kura Zushi, operated by Kura Corp., is the third-largest player in the industry. What sets it apart is its just-in-time production system, similar to

Teaching with LEGO

By Ron Pereira - August 22nd, 2007

I am passionate about teaching people the principles of lean and six sigma but this passion is nothing compared to how badly I want my children to learn and grow into well rounded/successful citizens. I often joke about how I intend to

Descriptive Statistics – Part 2

By Ron Pereira - August 21st, 2007

Last night in part 1 of this series we began our discussion of descriptive statistics by introducing the three measures of central tendency – the mean, median, and mode. As promised tonight we switch gears and are all about var

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