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

Descriptive Statistics – Part 1

By Ron Pereira - August 20th, 2007

Tonight we are starting a two part series on descriptive statistics. Yeah, I know, many of you are likely having nasty flash backs of some professor with bad breath but by the end of this series I hope to make all those bad thoughts

Six Sigma Control Phase is Not Anti-Lean

By Ron Pereira - August 16th, 2007

Last night I posted a question and now realize I was a bit too vague. This question was brought on due to a recent conversation I had with someone who asked me if I thought the “control” phase in the six sigma DMAIC road

Is the Six Sigma Control Phase Anti-Lean?

By Ron Pereira - August 15th, 2007

Here is a question for you. Do you feel the Six Sigma “control” phase, the last in the DMAIC roadmap, is anti-lean in any manner? I will share my thoughts soon but am interested in hearing what others think first.

CEO Of Toy Manufacturing Company Commits Suicide

By Ron Pereira - August 13th, 2007

Today I read an article over on Industry Week that troubled me for much of the day. Most of us have heard of all the recent issues coming out of China related to quality and safety. One of the major stories was related to the paint

Words from a Motley Fool Genius

By Ron Pereira - August 12th, 2007

I have not blogged on the whole Nardelli taking over Chrysler topic mainly because so many people already have and I have grown bored of the topic… that was until I read this article on The Motley Fool. The article takes the m

Learning to Swim

By Ron Pereira - August 10th, 2007

My 2.5 year old daughter hit a major milestone last night. She swam by herself with no life jacket. She and her older sister (5 years old) took swim lessons earlier in the summer. My 5 year old caught on during the lessons and w

Cooking up a Profit

By Ron Pereira - August 8th, 2007

No, this post is not about corporate fraud or funny accounting. Instead it is about a neat story I just read in the Columbus Dispatch (Go Bucks, beat scUM). The article is about Kahiki Foods, one of the largest Asian-frozen-food manu

7 Ways to Reduce Cost

By Ron Pereira - August 7th, 2007

I finished the book Gemba Kaizen by Masaaki Imai. It was quite good and I highly recommend it. It is chalk full of excellent tips like 7 ways to reduce costs in gemba (as Mr. Imai phrases it). They are: Improve Quality: Imai

The Big 200!

By Ron Pereira - August 6th, 2007

Yesterday I posted my 200th article on the blog! Also, today we received our 400th comment on the blog. Now many of these comments are from me responding to others (like the actual 400th comment) but hey who is counting! I have t

Bad Metrics in a Hair Salon?

By Ron Pereira - August 5th, 2007

I got my haircut yesterday. I am cheap and like the $12 action at Great Clips right up the street. They do a good job so I can’t see paying $35 (or more) for some overpriced version of the same thing. As the stylist was bring

God’s Country

By Ron Pereira - August 5th, 2007

As I previously explained my family and I took a roadtrip the last few weeks. We drove from Keller, Texas to Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada. We traveled through Oklahoma, Kansas, Nebraska, Iowa, South Dakota, and North Dakota on our wa

Transportation Muda

By Ron Pereira - August 4th, 2007

We spent the last few weeks in Canada visiting family. We had an awesome trip. As we were driving from Texas (yes driving with 3 kids more than 2400 miles) I had my eyes peeled for some good lean or six sigma topics. While driving

Facing the Giants

By Ron Pereira - July 30th, 2007

I recently watched the movie Facing the Giants and it made me rethink some things related to lean and six sigma. For those not familiar with the movie, Facing the Giants is a Christian based movie about an American football coach who g

5 Why’s Survey

By Ron Pereira - July 28th, 2007

My fellow Keller, Texas lean blogging pal Mark, of Lean Blog fame, is running a survey. Following up on the LEI survey that was released and discussed here, I’ve been talking with a few folks offline about what the “root ca

Kaizen Rules – 9 & 10

By Ron Pereira - July 26th, 2007

This week has been about all things kaizen. I have to come clean and admit I wrote this entire series last weekend as I was preparing to take off on vacation with my family. Thanks to the greatness of WordPress I was able to delay the

Kaizen Rules – 7 & 8

By Ron Pereira - July 25th, 2007

Want to win $50? Read this entire article to find out how. We have officially rounded the corner on our kaizen rules series. If you are just joining us you can catch up by checking these posts out: Rules 1 & 2 Rules 3 & 4 Rules

Kaizen Rules – 5 & 6

By Ron Pereira - July 24th, 2007

Tonight we continue with our multi-part kaizen rules series. For a recap of previous kaizen rules please check out: Rules 1 & 2 Rules 3 & 4 Rule 5: Correct mistakes at once If you are walking through your office, factory, or ev

Kaizen Rules – 3 & 4

By Ron Pereira - July 23rd, 2007

Yesterday we discussed the first two rules of kaizen. Tonight we will discuss excuses and perfection. Rule 3: Stop making excuses. Start questioning current practices. When we encounter a defect or failure we should not make excuses

Kaizen Rules – 1 & 2

By Ron Pereira - July 22nd, 2007

This week my plan is to blog about all things kaizen. I personally believe kaizen is the key to long term success – both professionally and personally. Often times we associate the word kaizen with “kaizen events” which are short

True Essence of Continuous Improvement

By Ron Pereira - July 22nd, 2007

If you have not visited the shmula blog today please do. Pete’s article on Hansei – What is Really Important? inspired me. I hope it does you as well.

The problem with that is…

By Ron Pereira - July 19th, 2007

For some reason some folks seem dead against making things better. One of the easiest ways I can tell if I am dealing with a concrete head is by simply listening to the words they use. For example, whenever I hear someone say (after

Final Thoughts of The 4-Hour Workweek

By Ron Pereira - July 18th, 2007

I finally finished “The 4-Hour Workweek” by Timothy Ferris. This book was quite the emotional journey. Before I even read it I was both skeptical and encouraged at the same time. I then came across an interesting conc

Explaining the Central Limit Theorem

By Ron Pereira - July 16th, 2007

If you hate statistics this post is for you. Why? Because it’s my intention to have you understand AND be in position to teach others one of the more complicated and misunderstood statistical concepts of our time – the central

Cummins Chief Snags Award

By Ron Pereira - July 15th, 2007

Tim Solso, CEO of Cummins, has won the WCBF Six Sigma CEO of the Year award. “Six Sigma is one of the best things we have ever done. Last year we saved $340 million and completed 2,200 projects. Since the inception of the program in

Just Throw it Away

By Ron Pereira - July 15th, 2007

I sometimes feel like a bit of a hypocrit when it comes to teaching people about 5S. For those not familiar with it, 5S is a philosophy and a way of organizing and managing our workspace, wherever that may be, by eliminating waste.

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