Ron Pereira, Author at Gemba Academy | Page 24 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.

758 Articles

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

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

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